Adventures at the DMV

The DMV is an interesting place. You walk in the doors, and you're immediately surrounded by all of America--both in number and in diversity. Everyone needs either an ID or a driver's license, so it's really one of the few places you can go to see every walk of life. However, apparently the DMV has never encountered children, particularly two rambunctious little boys. And this is probably because every other parent in the world is smart enough to not bring their kids to a place that might actually be the first level of hell.

But DH and I had been putting this off for quite some time, and because his flight this morning for a business trip was cancelled, and he was put on a later flight, we had some free time that we weren't expecting. So off to the DMV to become official residents of the state of Virginia. The line to get our ticket number wasn't so bad. The boys, for the most part, were behaving themselves, and I was chit chatting with an enormously pregnant woman behind me who was telling me how grateful she is to be having a daughter this time around because she already has one boy, and he's all the boy she can handle. :-/

Once we got through that line, the boys both needed to pee, and DH and I needed to fill out paperwork. Since DH's handwriting requires a professional cryptographer to decode, he took the boys to the bathroom and I filled out the forms. Once my brood came out of the bathroom, there were three empty seats, and as we walked toward them, a man came up to the seats as well. He saw me with my kids, but sat down anyway. What?!? However, the dirty look I gave him was apparently enough to make him get up. Score one for The Mom Look!

Since we had no idea how long our wait would be, we gave the boys our phones, hoping this would keep them occupied. Instead of drawing, Charlie thought it would be fun to stand on his chair and drop my phone on the floor. As it hit the hard tile floor, the case came off in two pieces, and the battery plate also came off. So there was my phone on the floor behind his chair in four pieces. And what did the people do who were sitting in the row of chair behind us??? Absolutely nothing. Not only did I have to shimmy my way out of my row of chairs, but I had to excuse my way through another row, pick up the pieces of my phone and make my way back to my seat. All the while, no one said or did anything. Just stared. I was actually pretty taken aback that no one even offered to help. Reminds me of being on the subway during rush hour and people not getting up and offering their seat to elderly people or pregnant women.

Anyway, the boys pretty much lost their minds in the DMV. Here's photographic proof of Lincoln going off the deep end:

Then, Lincoln took control of my phone and was absolutely delighted with the camera function:

Clearly, a career as a professional photographer is not in his future. Once the boys were bored with our phones, they began doing all kinds of strange things. Very loudly. While Charlie laughed hysterically as he tried to tear DH's nose off his face, Lincoln belted out his version of the ABCs on the top of his lungs. Our attempts to corral them were utter failures. Since we figured that our numbers had to be called soon, we got up from our seats to walk around the tiny and crowded room for a bit. Lincoln managed to weasel his little hand out of mine and made a run for it. Straight into one of the boards that are set up to provide a white background for DMV photos. Charlie thought this was hilarious and followed suit. As he zipped past me and I took off after him, the security guard walked past and told me that there was no running. No shit! I thought I'd brought my restless children to the playground! Not long after DH and I picked them up and refused to let them down, our numbers were called. I held onto 30 lbs of squirmy 2 year old boy for as long as I could, all the while trying to prevent him from pushing buttons and playing with everything within arm's reach at the counter. Finally, I had to put him down in order to get my photo taken. As soon as the little boy's feet touched the ground, he ran up to the white background and punched it, nearly knocking the damn thing over. :-/

The woman behind the counter was good-natured and sympathized with me as she recalled how utterly insane her own son was at this age... I got out of there as quickly as possible, leaving DH with the other whirling dervish. I put Lincoln in the car and drove around the parking lot 6 times before DH finished up.

So moral of the story? Don't take your kids to the DMV. They will actually lose their minds, and not only will you be embarrassed that your children have caused a scene in a very public place, but you will probably feel like dropping your kids off at the nearest police station and making a mad dash for it.