I got the state’s notice in the mail. My driver’s license, it said, will expire on my birthday.
As you may have heard, the feds now require a Real ID as the only type of driver’s license to board a flight, and those without it will need to use passports or other fed identification after 2020.
But to get the Real ID means extensive proof of identity and a trip to a Registry of Motor Vehicles branch office. You could also go to a AAA location — that is, if you’re a AAA member, but I’m not.
So I carefully read the information on the notice. “Happy Birthday,” it said. Follow the instructions to give “you the gift of time.” What a gift, I thought to myself, a day at the RMV. I’d rather have a colonoscopy, I said under my breath.
It had been years since I last had to renew my driver’s license in person. I remembered a visit years ago that had cost me nearly a half day of work.
The key to getting your Real ID is going online and completing a pre-application form that must be printed out and brought with you.
With my application form, birth certificate, social security card, passport and two documents proving Massachusetts residence within the last 60 days in my possession, I headed over to the Easthampton RMV branch, expecting the worse.
I figured if I went about mid-morning on a Friday in the summer, that might be better. I brought a book in case. I entered the first floor of the Eastworks building, where the RMV is located, and turned the corner to see a few people in the waiting area.
Wow, I thought to myself, this should be fast. I checked my watch, and it was 10:29 a.m.
But as soon as I entered the door, that happy feeling dropped faster than a melting ice cream cone on a summer day outside Herrell’s. The line inside was 18 people deep, with another dozen people seated in chairs.
A woman and a teenager were leaving just as I entered the door. “Good thing we got here when we did,” she said to the teen.
I heard a man’s voice: “Now serving B6 at counter number 5.”
I turned to the person behind me, “Is this the line just to get a ticket?”
“I think so,” she said. “But once you get a ticket, it’s faster.”
I looked at her and smiled as if to say “yeah right,” and we both chuckled.
So I got the idea -— you wait, so you can then wait some more.
As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. A woman appeared and started to very politely ask each person in line what we were there for and checked to see if we had the right paperwork.
I got up to the service desk and drew up a number slip, like the flimsy pieces of paper handed out at the deli counter. The time was now 10:50, and I took a seat and observe the RMV in operation.
One woman was told she didn’t have the necessary paperwork. “How would I have known this?” she asked. The RMV attendant mentioned the state’s web page. The woman in line said she didn’t have a computer.
“This is ridiculous,” the woman said loudly. She then turned around, cursed something not printable in a family newspaper, and walked out the door.
Another woman a few spots down, presumably a daughter, was talking to the attendant and pointed to a woman who appeared to be her mother, who was seated next to me. The woman, a scowl on her face, shook her head. “I’m sorry, but you can come back when you have those documents,” the attendant said.
The woman stepped out of the line and bent over to talk to the elderly person next to me. “We can’t do this today,” the woman said. “We need your birth certificate, and we need your proof of address. We’re going to have to come back.”
When my turn came, I was processed quickly.
The rep at the counter asked me for my current license and my paperwork, checked my social security card and the first-class mail that showed my address. She then had me look into an eye-test machine. I read one of the lines and I tell her the colors of the squares on the screen.
I then stepped back to be photographed.
I asked her if she knew what would happen in five years when my new license will expire. With the Real ID, would I need to come back in or would I be able to renew it online?
She said she didn’t know but said there’s talk that in the future your license and ID may be on your phone. I mentioned that biometrics might change things too -— our identification could be read with a thumb print or perhaps even a retina scan, I said.
“Hmm, that’s interesting,” she said. “But what happens if you have a problem with your eyes and it doesn’t work?”
I mentioned the great 2002 science fiction movie, “Minority Report,” where a character played by Tom Cruise is a fugitive from a dystopian police force. He’s on the run in a futuristic world that tracks your every move using retinal scans positioned everywhere.
In the movie, I explained, the Cruise character has his eyes surgically removed and replaced by a sloppy black market doctor.
“Ewww,” she said. “I love that stuff. I’ll have to look that up.” And she jotted down the movie’s name on a piece of paper.
I signed my name, paid the processing fee of $50 with plastic, and I was handed a paper temporary license. The real license would come in the mail in about a week, I was told. “Have a great weekend,” she said.
With that, my odyssey with the RMV was completed at 11:05 a.m. My visit took 36 minutes exactly -— less time than driving to the store and going through the deli and waiting to buy groceries.
My experience was better than I had expected, but I’m fortunate. I have access to a computer, I have all my documents and I have the $50 to pay for the ID. What about those who don’t?
Such are the questions when you wait in line to prove you are who you are to our government.
And what will happen with the next generation of required identification? What will it mean to our privacy and personal freedom, our ability to travel? I worry about discrimination against undocumented people.
As promised, I got my new license, the Real ID, in the mail in exactly one week.
My gift from the RMV. Happy Birthday to me.
John Paradis, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, lives in Florence. He can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.