Getting your driver's license renewed nowadays is a nightmare

EDGREWATER -- Have you had to renew your driver’s license lately? If not beware.

There is a long list of must haves to be able to do so. A friend of mine was turned away because she had to go get her marriage license to prove she really was who she said she was, even though her current license had her married name on it. So I dug mine up to be sure and my divorce papers, too, that show I kept my married name just in case.

The card that came in the mail telling me I needed to renew listed all the items you have to bring to get the license. These were:

* Government-issued birth certificate or valid passport or naturalization papers. Birth certificates from Puerto Rico had to be issued after 7/01/2010.

* Social security card or W-2 form or paycheck or SSA 1099 or non-SSA 1099, showing your complete social security number. No copies accepted

* Government-issued marriage certificate(s) or court-ordered name change.

* Two documents showing your residential address. They also ask you to make an appointment. This makes you assume that if you have an appointment it will speed you through the process, right? Wrong! There is also a list for Non-citizens included on this notice which I won’t list since I am a citizen.

I gathered all my documents and went to my appointment last week. When I arrived, there was a line out the door, which I still had to stand in even though I had an appointment. You still have to be checked in, the man said. He looked at my original (almost 66-year-old) birth certificate and pronounced it not good enough because I had to have a certified one. This is after standing in line for 20 minutes with my bad knees and back, which were screaming at me by the time

I got out of there. But before I did, I asked him what happened if I did not get this form by my birthday when my license expired and he said if I didn’t get it to come back three days before then and they would give me a 60-day extension. Problem with all this is my birthday is the 15 of August, and on the 28th of August I go in to have a total knee replacement and wouldn’t be able to get back so I will have to postpone my surgery. No sympathy from him. He told me it is a Homeland Security requirement -- not the motor vehicle department.

So I came home and called the vital records department of the state I was born in, which had a recording telling me this document will cost $30 and take three months to get.

Since that will definitely not work, I made another long distance call to the town I was born in and was informed it would cost $20 and they would send it the day after they received my request, accompanied by a copy of my current driver’s license and my check for $20. I am hoping this will get to me prior to my birthday so I don’t have to cancel my surgery.

Somehow, I have a feeling they will come up with something else that isn’t right and make me come back again.

My mom looked through her papers and came up with a birth certificate that showed the state seal and she found her's, too. I took these both back to see if they would suffice and interestingly enough her almost 87-year-old one has a seal you can feel and is good, but mine is only a copy; so not good.

While I was in line the first day, the gentleman in front of me and I got to talking about how silly all this is. We agreed that the people who they are trying to keep from getting a license, no doubt can waltz in with forged documents and breeze right through while we actual citizens jump through all these hoops. He said the same with the gun laws.

The people they really want to keep guns from can get them on the streets and skip the hoops an honest citizen will go through or they will be like this last shooter at the movie theater and actually get them legally, even though he had a known history of mental illness and should not have passed the background check.

The gentleman in line with me agreed that this country reacts instead of trying to find ways to weed people out before they get on an airplane, for instance. We now take our shoes off because of the shoe bomber. And we are x-rayed because of the underwear bomber.

Both are reactions to previous events causing backups and misery if you have to fly. And those who wish to try to bring a plane down still find new ways to try it, which are reacted to again. We have more regulations, which I personally don’t think is the reason we haven’t had a crash in a long time. It seems the government doesn’t mind inconveniencing its citizens in the name of “safety.”

But are we really any safer? Being on a fixed income, two long-distance phone calls and an extra $20 out of pocket is not convenient for me, plus the $48 the actual license will cost me. I am not happy about the extra expenses, but what can I do but comply?

I await my documents now and hope they make it in time and there are no other problems when I go to try again to renew the license I have had in Florida since 1963.

So start looking for your documents now and get your ducks in a row. Don’t expect to be put ahead because you have an appointment. I hope this helps you make one trip and come out with your license that same day.