Bad Car-ma: My Wife is a Fugitive from the Law

Posted on April 10, 2007 @ 1:25 pm

A few days ago, I wrote about my good car karma. What I neglected to mention, however, is that my wife doesn’t share the same blessings. A tendency to cruise around town with the needle on empty, a lack of respect for scheduled oil changes, and an outright contempt for the two-second rule have garnered Kourtney some seriously bad car-ma. That being said, it seems there was a balancing of the Cosmic Automotive Scales this weekend, and it all came crashing down around her ears.

I’ll try to make this brief. On Saturday, we received a notice of cancellation from our car insurance company. When we called to ask why our policy was canceled, the insurance company informed us that Kourtney’s driver’s license was revoked back in October 2006. Surely we’d know if that were the case, right? Well, she called the DMV on Monday, and they confirmed that, yes, her license was yanked over six months ago because of a legal discrepancy in her records.

A call to the local Social Security office revealed that her name change following our marriage in 2003 was never actually processed. As a result, the name on her driver’s license didn’t match the one in her Social Security record, thus causing the DMV to take action (years after the fact, of course). Now, we’re working with the DMV, Social Security office, insurance company, and state police to get this whole rigmarole sorted out. In the meantime, Kourtney has no license and therefore can’t drive herself to work.

See what I mean? Bad car-ma.

Anyway, a few thoughts occur to me in the wake of this whole ordeal.

1. A heads-up would have been nice. When the state decides to cancel your driver’s license, wouldn’t it be nice if they sent a letter or something informing you not to drive around for another six months without a license? Well, it seems they don’t do that here in Georgia. It’s your responsibility to know whether the state has randomly revoked your driver’s license. I guess you should call and check fortnightly just to be on the safe side.

2. State bureaucracies really do move at a glacial pace. Here’s a quick recap of the timeline. We were married in March 2003 and filed for Kourtney’s legal name change shortly thereafter. She applied for a Georgia driver’s license a few months later with her new name, and it went through without a hitch. Since then, we’ve filed taxes, applied for a mortgage, registered for tags, and purchased health and car insurance — all using the new name. Then, in October 2006, Georgia finally stumbled across the discrepancy and revoked her license. It took another six months for this information to filter down to our car insurance company and, ultimately, us. So, that’s four years of lag time since the Social Security office failed to process her change of name that it eventually caught up with us.

3. Old people are stupid. So, we’re waiting in the Social Security office today, and this elderly couple is in front of us in line. When their number is called, they walk up to the Faceless Government Entity at the counter, and the wife shares the following tale of woe: “A few weeks ago, the Social Security Administration called us at home to notify us of a change in our benefits. Well, my husband doesn’t always feel like getting up to answer the phone.” Yes, that was her “complaint” in its entirety. The Faceless Government Entity obviously wasn’t sure how to respond, so she promised to make a note of it in their records. That seemed to placate the couple, who left after waiting nearly an hour to get to the front of the line. Man, I could totally do without the elderly.

4. We need a national identification card. My wife showed up at the Social Security office with her birth certificate, marriage certificate, her driver’s license, her social security card, and her passport. In order to issue a card with her married name, however, the Faceless Government Entity also needed a copy her permanent record from high school. Her permanent record! What, do they want to make sure she was never caught smoking in the girl’s room, or do they just want to confirm that she passed Earth Science? I know they want to protect against identity theft, but if someone has gone to all the trouble to collect forged versions of all the documents my wife was lugging around with her, I think they deserve to get away with it. Can’t we just have one magical government-issued card that covers all this?

The good news is that she only has another two or three days tops of sitting around government offices before she can drive again. Only time will tell if she starts getting her oil changed every 3,000 miles after this experience. It’s all about the car-ma, man. All about the car-ma.

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