Rachel vs. DMV

Rewind to the month of June for a moment. Rachel’s car was due for inspection, so she made an appointment at the DMV in Salem to have it inspected. During the inspection, her car fails for emissions, getting the dreaded red sticker. Over the course of the month, she has numerous repairs done on the car at the Hyundai dealership. During the repairs, she mentions that she forgot the paperwork from the DMV stating the car had failed inspection, but the mechanic said not to worry about it.

When your car fails inspection, the DMV gives you some time to have all the necessary repairs done. I had my car inspected in the middle of the month and was given 45 days to have my wipers and horn repaired, so I assumed that she had more time to have the car inspected. It wasn’t until Friday night that we realized that I was very wrong. Either Sasha or Gerald decided it would be a good idea to throw up on her inspection paperwork and receipt from the dealership. After Rachel cleans up the mess, she goes into panic mode, realizing that she had to have the car inspected by the next day.

When Rachel goes into panic mode, it’s as if she becomes a totally different person. First, she starts to cry because she feels like a failure for not doing the inspection sooner. This only gets worse when she realizes that the last page of the inspection paperwork needed to be filled out by a certified emissions repair facility. When she realizes that the dealership is not listed under the certified emissions repair facilities on the DMV website, she goes into greater panic. She starts to cry even more.

I decide to take matters into my own hands at this point, because Rachel is only letting herself cry more. (By the way, even when she’s crying, Rachel is adorable). The next morning, she’s paranoid about driving her car with an expired inspection sticker, and I call the DMV. I explain to the DMV what happened and they explain that I simply have to contact the dealership, and they will either take care of the paperwork there or direct us to another facility. I contact the Hyundai dealership in the afternoon, again explaining the situation, and they told me to bring the paperwork to them on Monday morning and everything would be taken care of for inspection.

Today was the first day Rachel drove the car on the road since realizing her inspection had now expired. We weren’t even in the car when she became paranoid that a cop was going to pull her over and give her a $150 fine for an expired inspection sticker. She drove the exact speed limit the entire time and even refused to stop at Wawa for coffee, since she was worried that she would see a cop there. (Cops love coffee, therefore they love Wawa).

We get to the dealership and the mechanic first prints out a new receipt for Rachel and fills out all the paperwork. I’m not sure why they didn’t do this to begin with, since she clearly told them that her car failed inspection for emissions in the first place. Our next destination is the DMV, traveling to the DMV in Ancora since it was closer to where we were.

On our way there, a black pick-up truck decides to tailgate us the entire ride to the DMV. Tailgating Tim won’t get off our ass, driving inches away from our car. Had I been in my old Toyota Corolla, I would have slammed on my breaks to teach Tailgating Tim a lesson on driving. My Corolla had a nice rubber bumper, it was like a machine, (no damage to my car, tons of damage to the other car).

We finally get to the DMV and Rachel is so worried about Tailgating Tim that she misses the inspection building and starts to head towards the driving test area. We finally turn around to be stuck by Tailgating Tim again. Tailgating Tim is chatting away on his cell phone, making it complicated to get the ticket for the gate to open. After he finally gets his ticket, he slowly inches towards the inspection station. Of course, Rachel has lots of issues with trying to get the ticket, seeing that she has tiny, little arms and can’t reach the machine. She puts the car in park and open the door to get the ticket. After getting the ticket, she’s frantically trying to put on her seatbelt to get past the gate before it came down again. She was very worried that the gate would come crashing down on her car, which at this point I think I would have had to laugh at, since this entire experience seemed to not be going her way.

We finally get to the inspection station and pull up behind Slow-Mahoney Steve. Irvin Inspector takes all of Rachel’s paperwork and credentials, and tells us to wait in the small room off to the side of the inspection station. We are now in the same room as Slow-Mahoney Steve, who is also waiting for his car. When his piece of shit truck finally pulls forward, I realize that his inspection sticker expired in February. For the last two days, Rachel has been stressed about driving her car to the inspection sticker after one day of expiration, and this bozo has been driving around for the last six months with an expired sticker.

Rachel finally gets her new inspection sticker, a shiny blue one with new numbers on it. As we are leaving the DMV, we once again get stuck behind Slow-Mahoney Steve, who is now driving about 10 miles below the speed limit. Rachel and I are laughing at the situation, causing me to misread the directions and miss the turn for Peter’s Diner. After finally eating breakfast at Geets Diner, we head to Target to pick up a few essential items.

Rachel’s brain still hasn’t begun to function in the store. As we pass by wallets, she gets extremely excited about a little green wallet, leaving the cart in the middle of the store. I had to retrieve it so that nobody would run into the cart (or other people trying to avoid the cart).

She’s sleeping now. Fingers crossed that she wakes up with a fully functional, non-paranoid brain.