If you haven’t yet, you should get a Real ID.
And you’re like, “But I already have an ID.”
Yes, but this is a Real ID.
From what I’ve read, “A Real ID card allows you to board domestic flights, enter secure federal buildings, and visit nuclear power plants,” though I’m pretty sure doing two of those would get you tackled anyway.
But you can use it to fly. Turns out you can’t fly domestically without a Real ID, unless you have a passport. Which is easier to get. But I mean, once you get it, it’s more convenient than a passport.
For one, it’s easier to carry. You don’t want to have to schelp the whole big passport into the nuclear power plant with you every single time you go. Who’s gonna hold it when you put on the hazmat suit?
And on top of that, with a passport, you have to find the page that has your picture on it, which, thanks to sophisticated passport technology, is always moving to a different page, like bentching does in bentchers.
A lot of people are nervous about going to the DMV. But I’m here to tell you that there’s nothing to worry about, because no one there has any more of an idea of what they’re doing than you do.
I’m uniquely qualified to talk about this because I went twice. I went a few months ago because I had to renew my license anyway, so I figured I should get a Real ID, and then after waiting on the third line, they refused me because I didn’t have the right papers. Well I had some of the right papers. But I still had to keep waiting on all the lines so I could renew my regular license, because I had enough papers for that, apparently, and pay the fees, and then come back when I was willing to stand in lines again and pay more fees.
So I don’t know how it works everywhere, but I can tell you how it works in my corner of NJ, in the DMV that I’ve been to twice.
-First you need to make an appointment. But it’s not like a doctor’s appointment. It’s more like the doctor said, “A hundred people can come at the same time. But not 101. We can’t handle 101.”
-You should also use your powers of persuasiveness to get someone else that you know to make an appointment for the same time, so you have someone to wait with. Sell them on the benefits of Real ID.
“You’ll be able to visit federal buildings!”
“Like what?”
“The Capitol? I don’t know.”
-For example, when I went this second time, I brought along my emotional support daughter. As my oldest, this daughter is no stranger to me venting in her general direction.
-You also want to make sure you bring all the right papers, and that they’re yours. Every paper is worth a certain number of “points”, which I think it how they try to make it fun. But I’m not sure they know how points work.
-You need six points. A birth certificate is four and a passport is four, so you think, “That’s 8; it should be enough.” No, they only want one of those documents. You have to then supplement it with two things that are worth one point each.
-You also can’t just present the passport and be done with it. If Real ID helps you fly domestically, and a passport helps you fly internationally and domestically, shouldn’t the passport alone be enough? Yet the passport’s only four points. You also can’t just show them a license, which has your picture and your address, and to get it, you needed six points. It should be worth six points! And these are the very people who gave it to you! It’s worth one point.
-The first line you have to wait in when you get there is the line of people coming in the door of the building. This is an unofficial line in which people walk into the building one at a time and stop in the doorway to take stock of the room, like a car wreck, and try to figure out which of the crisscrossing lines to wait on first. There are people everywhere. Some are sitting down. Are they in line? Have they given up? There’s a screen coming down from the ceiling with what appears to be flight numbers. There are also numbers being yelled across the room on a PA, first in English and then again in Spanish, but more slowly, so that people can translate them back into English in their heads.
-Turns out there’s actually a sign that tells people where to go. They have to go to reception. This sign is stuck to the reception desk, at about waist high, and is almost always blocked by someone who’s waiting in line.
-Get in line for reception. Some people will ask you, “Is this the line?” and you’ll say, “I think so,” and they’ll get behind you. Then you’ll see a DMV employee walking around and telling the people who come in that they have to fill out a form before standing in line. You missed that person earlier, because of all the people in the way, and the fact that this person is shorter than everyone around them and also not wearing any kind of uniform.
“Oh, he’s holding a stack of papers!”
Yeah, everyone’s holding a stack of papers.
-So he gives you a form, and you have to leave the line and fill it out. You can’t just fill it out in line on the back of your emotional support daughter.
-If you ask the guy for a pen, he’ll gesture vaguely at these three desks on the other side of the sitting area that each has a person there already, leaning down to waist height and filling out a form with a loaner pen, which is just like a regular pen, but it’s wrapped in a piece of construction paper so no one will steal it.
-Get in line for reception (again). You can now pull out whatever you brought along to do while on line, such as a tiny sefer, but you will not be able to focus on it, because of the constant announcements: “A175 to window seven!” Then, “A175 to window seven, but in Spanish!” It’s a good way to learn Spanish, or at least how to say all the numbers. And also the word “nostrador” which is a super distracting word. And they say it a lot. What’s a nostrador? It sounds mysterious and fun. So I later looked it up, and it means “counter”.
-When you get to the front of the line, the receptionist checks a list to make sure you have an appointment, and gestures vaguely at the correct line for you to wait at and mumbles something through the glass at a lower volume than the announcements.
-Get in line. This line will take you to a window where you can feed a woman papers through a tiny slot in the glass that was not built by people who thought that maybe people would be passing papers through it, so she can make sure they’re all originals and count your points and tell you if you have enough.
-The previous time that I did this, I did not. I didn’t have enough proofs of address. I just had a credit card statement, and also my license which has my address on it and my picture. That was not enough. Just enough to get a regular license.
-They didn’t like the credit card statement. The mail has to be from a bank or a utility company. Even though the utility company sometimes just writes, “resident”.
-So this time, I came with not only another credit card bill, which I didn’t want to bring but my wife put it in my folder, but also a utility bill and a bank statement. I fed the papers through the tiny slot one at a time, and then at some point the woman told me, “That’s enough. I have what I need.” And I’m like, “Really?” because I was still holding the utility bill and the bank statement. And she said, “Yeah; we’re good.”
-Boy did my emotional support daughter get an earful, once she rejoined me from her window.
-For your next wait, you get to sit down on one of the chairs while newcomers climb over you in the search for pens, and then they stand between you and the screens that you have to stare at as you wait for your number to be called on the PA system that you have long since blocked out.
-You finally get to go to the nostrador, which is not as exciting as it sounds. This is where they make photocopies of all the originals that you absolutely had to bring. They also take a picture of you and ask if it’s okay, and I always say it is, because I have to take off my glasses for the picture and then put them on to see it, and no one is going to see this picture anyway except for the cops and airport security and the guard at the nuclear power plant, and when they look back at me I’m going to be wearing glasses.
-Then they give you a flimsy piece of paper and say, “This is your license until the new one comes.” And you say, “Yeah, but I already have a license.”
“Oh, you can use that too.”
-And then they say, “Hey! You want to register to vote while you’re here?”
-Now? There’s no other way to register to vote besides for after waiting on four lines at the DMV? What I want to do, ASAP, is stop at one of the three desks and reorganize my stack and make sure my license is somewhere in there.
-Though I guess I can use this temporary license.
-I wonder if I can fly with it.
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
