Old People Drivers

It came in the mail this week: my first Old Geezer driver license.

It's official. I've joined the ranks of the old geezers terrorizing all those young whippersnappers on the road. In two days, I'll be 65 years old, which means I was required to update my current license.

I don't know how it works in other states, but Arizona doesn't have a whole lot of reasons that force you to get a new license. A name change or an address change, basically. OR AGING. Now that I've achieved Geezer status, I'll have to update every five years.

I about died of sticker-shock when Sarah got her first license. The expiration date stamped on it was her birthday in October of 2054. That's when she'll turn 65. Which happens to be exactly eight weeks after my 100th birthday. That was too large a dose of reality for me to swallow. I'm pretty sure I'll be a distant memory by the time Sarah gets her Old Geezer driver license!

This was my second driver license ever, when I was 18-going-on-19.

I look like a juvenile delinquent. I think they confiscated my first license.

Being born and raised in California, my first three licenses were obtained in that state. In those days, we were required to renew our licenses every four years and, I believe, we had to take the written exam each time. It was stressful, but it ensured that we were regularly updated on the rules of the road.

This was my second Arizona driver license, when I was almost 31,

having obtained the first after we moved to Mesa in March 1980.

Apparently the Arizona rule was license renewal every five years at the time we'd moved to the Grand Canyon State. We didn't have to retake the written test every time, though. As time went on, the need to renew was relaxed more and more, right up until the 100-year shock I received when Sarah got her first license in about 2006.

(I used to think that potty-training was the worst nightmare of parenting. Then I had teenagers who needed to learn how to drive. Horrors!)

The next license(s) should have been in 1989 and/or 1990, when I got married and my name changed to Carter, and then a year later moved to the White Mountains and began teaching at Blue Ridge High School, but I don't have that one. I seem to remember that I renewed after getting married, and then they just stuck a sticker on the back of that license to show my new address.

How I hated this picture. I was turning 42, Sarah and Jacob were six and five,

I'd been teaching for six years, and Dylan was born ten months later.

Obviously I wasn't much for smiling in photographs. Due to ridicule from key people early in my life, I believed I looked grotesque when I smiled. So I learned to keep my emotions off my face. Many people over the years (who later became friends) told me that their first impression of me was that I was cold and distant. In reality, I suffered from a crippling fear of rejection.

I think the MVD employee who snapped the above picture made me laugh just as she pressed the button. I hated it, but imagine my surprise when I had to show my license at the post office one time, and the worker told me, "That's the best license picture I've ever seen!" I could tell by his voice that he meant it. When I voiced my disagreement, he insisted that he loved how happy I looked, whereas the people in most license photos look disgruntled.

New license when I remarried and name changed (temporarily) to Reynolds.

I probably would never have needed to renew my license again until I turned 65, but I blew it when I remarried in 2010. (Stupidest thing I've done in my entire 65 years.) Since I chose to change my name, I had to get another license.

Then when we divorced, after three miserable years and another seventeen months battling it out in court, I had to get another license to reflect that I'd returned to my previous married name. I toyed briefly with going back to my maiden name of Butler, but it made more sense to keep the Carter name my children share. The last thing I wanted was to bear the name of the man who hated and abused me and my children for three years.

I wasn't too thrilled with the picture below, either, so I wasn't too unhappy to renew my license this month. I prefer the current, top photo in this post...even though I now look like a geriatric delinquent!

Going back to the Carter name was worth smiling about. Age 60.