My Unstyled Napps and My Driver’s License

Posted by nappyme on March 5, 2007 · 9 Comments 

Ok… I was totally unprepared for this. Up until last summer, I had been hanging on to my out-of-state driver’s license and refusing to get a current one. Well, I lost it. So I went dang near all summer without a license. But things kept coming up where I needed to show a picture ID, and of course I had none. Sooo, I was forced to go get an updated license.

Got really, really, really nappy hair? Then cNappymeNow is the place to be. Come on in and join this exciting new forum. We’d love to have you. Click cNappymeNow for more information 

Boy-oh-boy did I have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get a new one. First, I had to go downtown and get a copy of my birth certificate. Then I went to take the driver’s test. When I got there, since I didn’t have an old license to turn in, it was like I had never driven before. So not only did I have to take the written test, I had to drive too.

Now how hard could this be. I thumbed through the book really quickly, and passed the written test with flying colors. Up next, the driving test. Long story, a little shorter, I flunked. Badly. Apparently you have to score like 12 and under to pass. Everytime you do something wrong they GIVE you points. When I got finished, I had 45 points. Yep 45 points. You da thunk I hit a dang baby stroller or something. So she told me to come back the next day.

 Well, I did. This time I had a different person, a male examiner, go out with me. “Have you never driven before?” he asks as he looks at my score from the day before. Turns out he’d never seen one that high before. He asked me some questions about my driving test, (I suppose he didn’t want to be in the car with me if I were going to be runnin’ stop signs, mowing down little dogs and plowin’ down old people) and decided the female examiner who previously scored me didn’t know what she was doing. Something about her being temporary summer help or something like that. I decided that was a relief, maybe I wasn’t a hopeless case after all.

This time I pass. I take my picture, (hair fixed just like the picture at left) which turns out soooooooo cute. Even the bored-to-death young lady whose sole task it is to to tell hundreds of people to look at the smilie face below the lens and smile even said my picture was cute. Now in all truth, I take gorgeous ID pictures. Always have. But this one was extra special; it’s the first time I’d take an ID picture with my naps. Y’all I loved that picture. Then as luck would have it, my other license turned up. So ok, now I have two.

Then I lost both of them.

So for the last two months, I have been hoping either one of these licenses would turn up. But the haven’t. So figuring my luck would wear off sooner rather than later, I decide to go to the DMV today once again to get a replacement. I just figured they’d use the pic they took the past summer. WRONG! BUUUUUZZZZ..Thank you for playing. They take a new one! I was tooooo through. Y’all I had just shampooed my hair and put it up in big ‘ole fat twists — three across the top and four in the back. So I had wrapped my head up in a scarf and took myself to the DMV. And that was the state of my hair when I found out I had to take a new picture for my replacement driver’s license.

DAMN! DAMN! DAMN! (That’s my tribute to Florida Evans y’all…)

Ok…so I dash off to the restroom to at least put some lipstick on. I figure, my headwrap…just a thin little scarf that I thought was looking kinda cute, would suffice. When I get back, the same young lady from this summer, little miss I’m-bored-out-of-my-skull says, “You can’t wear nothin’ on your head,” in a very dead panned voice. “You’re going to have to take that off.”

These days, I find myself being incredulous a lot, and today was no different. “What?!” I exclaim. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I say standing there with my mouth open and staring at her like that’s going to make her change her mind or something. You got it…she just stares back at me like, “Get a grip. I’m bored to tears…just take your freakining scarf off so I can take your picture and go the heck home…it’s almost quittin’ time lady…get a move on.”

Alrighty then. I think about taking it another day, but I’ve already paid for the dang thing so I dash back off to the restroom to see what, if anything I can do to make my hair presentable. After all, I’m going to have to look at this thing for the next six years. Sigh.

I get to the restroom and pull my scarf off and to my surprise, my hair is actually kinda cute. See, I hadn’t really paid that much attention to how my hair looked before I put the scarf on and left the house. In fact, I really wasn’t caring how I was looking in general cause I was off from work today. So I have on a pink and green scarf with swirl pattern in it. An over sized orange sweatshirt (you got it orange like a road side highway workman…hey just like the pic on the left…imagine that) and a pair of multi-colored flowered jeans. Ok…ya’ll get the picture. I wasn’t plannin’ on takin no dang picture. I figured I’d dash in, get the replacement license and that would be that. Obviously that didn’t happen but that was the plan.

So anyway, with my hair looking similiar to this picture, I pulled my twists on the sides back and braided those into the four in the back. Left the top one out to hang down the side of my face. Checked on my hot pink lipstick I had put on in the previous little bathroom session, and decided I was good to go.

I went back to the bored lady, who looked up from her magazine she was thumbing through long enough to tell me to sit in the black metal chair across from the camera. “Look at the smilie face under the lens,” she instructs me. I do and I flash one of my big ‘ole smiles. The flash went off and that was it. About five minutes later, I had a my replacement driver’s license. And after all of that, you can hardly even see my hair. A giant water mark “Don’t Drink and Drive” is covering it up.

But as usual, dang if it ain’t a cute picture after all. Admittedly, my hair isn’t as cute in this one as it was in the first one, but it turned out ok.

Hope I don’t lose this one too!

Filed under Random Nappy Thoughts and Experiences