My Driver’s License Got Suspended
by Will
I got a letter a few weeks ago informing me that my driver’s license has been suspended retroactively to last May. This is because after I junked my car last February I never turned in my license plates. They sat in a drawer in my kitchen (with my instruction manuals and take-out menus) for well over a year. I have a self-destructive resentment of a) mailing things and b) the government ordering me to do things. Well, I showed them!
I’m normally a responsible person: I pay my taxes and credit cards, I vote, I’ve never argued with police officers. But there’s something about the inconvenience of the Department of Motor Vehicles that makes me resent them. At least once a day over the past year I’d think “I guess I should mail in those plates” but I never started to do it. I junked the car in February 2006. In May I bought padded envelopes to mail the plates. In September I looked up the address. Last month I mailed them in.
I have a friend who had a car in New York City and refused to pay parking tickets. He let them mount on the floor of his passenger seat — never even thinking of paying them. I remember thinking how pointless that was, but over the last year I experienced the same thing.
Maybe this is the start of a series of increasingly rebellious actions that will result in me leading a military coup against the New York State government! Or, more likely, I just won’t get a car until such a time as I’m not living in NYC.
Comments
What does it mean that it was suspended retroactively? What kind of pointlessness is that? Is part of the penalty that you now have to write letters of apology and disclosure to every place you’ve presented your license as a valid form of identification?
“Dear American Airlines,
Due to some nonfeasance on my part which has since been called out by the New York State government, I must confess that the license I presented to you as a form of identification when I last flew with you was actually invalid and I boarded one of your airplanes under false pretenses last year. I am very sorry about that. I’d be happy to inform the other passengers if you think that would be helpful.”
the same thing happened to me when i sold my car before i moved here from ithaca. i told the person i sold it to to not worry about the plates and i got the same notice in the mail. she eventually turned them in for me, but i’m not sure if they automatically unsuspend your license.