I don’t believe in karma. I can’t. My personality won’t allow it. When pressed to think of an idea such as karma, my survival instincts kick in and I force myself to believe that there will be no comeuppances. I have to believe that, for I am a jerk.
My jerky demeanor is expressed through my humor: the less taste jokes have, the funnier I find them. Jokes that play off of sexism, racism, genocide…if the jokes I hear are just completely off the wall and mock an already persecuted people, I don’t know what it is, I just laugh. Some people will hear a tasteless joke and immediately pucker up their faces and get on their high horse and begin to preach about the wrongness of the applied humor. Personally, it’s the wrongness that I find so funny. The laughter also keeps me at a safe distance from others. If I didn’t laugh at the jokes, then that would mean that I am sympathizing with someone or worse yet, sometimes even empathizing. Empathy gives me the willies. No, it’s best to sit back and laugh, I find. Call me a jerk, but that’s how I get by.
We jerks love to complain as well, and what better place to do so than at the Department of Motor Vehicles? People swear that the D.M.V. is the nexus of Hell. It’s great fodder for comedians, and if you’re at a cocktail party and someone starts an anecdote with, “So, I was at the D.M.V. the other day…” sighs will be heaved and someone will say, “Let me venture a guess: something pissed you off.” Along with the post-office, the D.M.V. is a great place to vent your frustrations. Hell, with enough clever verbiage, you could blame all your faults in life on the Department of Motor Vehicles and people will believe it.
“Hey, Kyle. Guess what. Loretta left me, and on top of that, my boss just fired me!”
“What?” Kyle will say. “That’s crazy! What happened?”
“Well, I was at the D.M.V. earlier…”
“Say no more,” Kyle will say, waving his hand in dismissal. “Say no more. I hear you.”
So I was at the D.M.V. the other day to renew my license. Just a quick in and out: hand over my information, snap a photo, and head out the door, right? Well, kind of. Now, to be honest, this was not a full-scale D.M.V. that I was at. There were no orange cones for parallel parking outside, no dumb kids failing the written exam, none of that. It was just the photo center, which restricts the size of the place to about the length and width of a child’s bedroom. The walls were lined with foldout chairs, and at the north side of the waiting area was a large, red pull-ticket dispenser, the kind you would see at a deli. Past the ticket dispenser was the other section of the Photo Center, separated by a half-wall, where all the action happens: the flash, the glitz, the glamour.
I went in there a few days ago before work, thinking it would be a simple out-patient procedure, but I was greeted with eight people lining the walls, occupying nearly all the chairs. I stood in the middle of the waiting room, poked my head into the actual photo center, threw my arms up and said, “Well, I don’t have time for this!” and headed out the door.
But this time I allotted myself enough minutes before work for the waiting. I walked in and four customers, each with their own respective wall to wait against, were passing the time. I snagged a number and took the seat nearest the door. The gentleman across from me, an older man, sat with his arms resting on his four-pronged walker. It had two gray wheels in the front, and the two supports in the back were cushioned with half-cut tennis balls. But these weren’t any run-of-the mill, clichéd yellow tennis balls. Each ball was blue and orange, giving his obvious handicap a bit of pizzazz, a touch of rebellious attitude. His walker seemed to say about him, “Yes, it’s true. I am growing old and weary,” while the unconventional tennis balls yelled, “but I’ll do it my way, baby!”
Seeing as there were no reading materials in the room besides pamphlets concerning drunk driving or a brief recap of all the rules of the road, I began to mentally drift off. In my head, I had the old man across from me in all sorts of zany situations. With the aid of his walker and unique tennis balls, I was placing him on snowy mountaintops, or tailgating at the University of Florida (the school-color tennis balls would get him free booze from the students), and my personal favorite: vying for the heart of a woman. His competition: a man with the same style of walker, but with plain yellow tennis balls. They would duel in the promenade of the retirement home, their walkers as weapons, of course. Geriatric Jedi fighting!
My daydream was interrupted, however, by a conversation coming from the other side of the Photo Center. The half-wall restricted my view, but I heard what sounded like a conversation between two dumb women. And I don’t mean dumb as in “stupid,” or “idiotic,” but dumb as in a deaf person or a long-time mute trying to verbally communicate. It was a very flat, dull sound coming from these two unseen women, and I couldn’t quite make out what it was. It sounded like:
“Bokay, buy’ll bee you boborrow.”
I furrowed my brow, trying to figure out the odds that would result in two deaf people coincidentally working in the same job, taking over each other’s shifts.
“At least 5,000,000 to 1,” I thought.
A somewhat rotund woman came through the waiting area, heading towards the door. I realized she wasn’t a deaf person once I saw her face. It was a woman with Down Syndrome. She turned one last time to say goodbye to her coworkers, thus confirming that she was one of the women having the conversation I had just overheard.
An unseen man from the photo action center said, “34. Is number 34 here?” I was number 36.
The old man with the walker stood up, his yellow number ticket in hand and made his way to the desk, only, he wasn’t leaning on his walker to walk. He was carrying it; all four legs were off the ground as he sashayed on his own power. I was reminded of George Costanza carrying his Rascal down the busy streets of Manhattan.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, I thought. I’m gonna have to call “bullshit” on you, old man.
The old man’s actions bothered me. I wanted to sit him down, hold his shoulder and say calmly, “Hey, buddy. Look at me. The tennis balls are totally badass. Honest. I’m not dissin’ your style at all. But your utilization of this device is lacking considerably. Get it together, man.”
On the other side of the wall, the D.M.V. guy was asking questions like, “Do you have your camera card with you?” and “Is this all the proper information?” followed by, “Ok then. Have a seat and please wait for your turn to take the photo.”
Minutes later, I heard the dumb voice again.
“Bisser Bobbins?”
Oh, no. The remaining girl with the Syndrome was in charge of instructions and photo-taking! I couldn’t understand the girl, but I heard the old man’s answers.
“4195,” he said, after asking for the question to be repeated.
“176 Liberty Drive,” he answered to another question that had to be asked twice.
“215-824-7121,” was his last answer before being told, I think, to sit in the chair and take the photo.
The woman waiting to my left answered to her name and went to the front to collect her new identification and promptly left.
The girl with D.S. worried me. It didn’t anger me that a person with Down Syndrome was working at the D.M.V., but it did irritate me that she was given the most vocal job in the place. It was almost as if this was a strange test of basic human patience and tolerance. I felt like an unwitting participant in a university study. “How many people,” the sociologists probably wondered, “came to the D.M.V., and upon seeing the person with Down Syndrome behind the camera yelled out, alternating inflection on every other word, ‘Oh, what the fuck is this about?’”
What were they trying to prove? That people are intolerant assholes? Trust me, you don’t need a test to prove it. It’s inherent in our nature.
I wouldn’t lose my patience at the D.M.V.; I had at least enough self control to avoid that, but I didn’t want to embarrass the girl and myself by repeatedly saying, “Huh? What? What are you saying? I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” My intent was not to get frustrated, but the tone o
f her voice- the dull flatness of it- it boxed my ears and was nearly incomprehensible. My best bet was to follow the lead of the people before me and memorize the sequence.
Test subject 35 was called, and I repeated her answers in my head. Last four digits of your social security, address, phone number. Social, address, phone number. Sohsh, add, phone. Sohsh, add, phone….
When my number was called, I went through the motions while not making eye contact with the girl. I stared ahead and spoke only when she stopped.
“3101.” I said.
“(Unintelligible)?”
“108 Main Street.”
“(Unintelligible)?”
“215-872-9224.”
She motioned to the chair and I made a triumphant fist as if I had just passed a crucial mid-term exam.
Sitting in the camera chair, I was proud that I didn’t embarrass the girl, but once the photo was taken, I began embarrassing myself. I kept blinking, and the girl behind the camera was getting irritated.
“Bou’re Binking.” She told me.
On the computer screen that faced me, I saw my image: knotted long hair, uneven part, slight acne scars, eyes closed.
Three times. Three times she had to retake the photo because I couldn’t not blink during the process. Humbled, I took the fourth photo and deemed it acceptable. I thanked the employees after my license was printed and got the hell out of there.
It wasn’t until I was in the safe confines of my car that I began cracking jokes in my head and laughing hysterically. Bad jokes of the Down Syndrome variety. They weren’t cold, hard, insults, but puns that played off of the chromosomal affliction.
“When one clocked in and the other clocked out…did I witness a… Down-shift?’
It eased away all of the tension I had pent up inside of me, and thankfully, I had enough resolve to wait until I was out of earshot from everyone else. But I still laughed, still had terrible taste in humor, was still safely distancing myself from others, still making myself a jerk.
I started the car and began driving to work, making these bad jokes to myself, and I thought that if karma was an actual presence in our world, I would get smacked head-on by a tractor trailer in the next 30 seconds. Either that, or the karma would wait, would hide itself in the deep recesses of my future, where my children would have Down Syndrome. I thought about that. My child being the physical embodiment of all my verbal assaults. Only, it would be too many afflictions for a single child to have. No. In order to be properly punished by the universe, I would need a whole litter of kids with all sorts of serious afflictions: Down Syndrome, Diabetes, morbid obesity, Autism, rickets, eczema…the list goes on. I would look at my bundle of kids wandering around the living room, sniffing dryer sheets, bumping into walls, stumbling around like little Verbal Kints, and I would be constantly reminded of all the jokes I made through the years. And you know what I’d say proudly?
“Worth it. Worth it.”
Contents
Confidence Tricksters (Three Different Ones)