The other day I did one of the most stupidly nerveracking things in the world and went to the DMV. This is a normal activity that my brain has decided is as dangerous as being near hungry, unsecured wildlife, and I had to take a Xanax the night before to be able to sleep and one morning of in order to handle going through the appointments (S! Plural! Multiple!) without experiencing complete and total mental collapse, which is stupid and embarrassing, but for which I am grateful anyway. I used to have to rawdog these experiences and it would be so stressful to me that I would be sick to my stomach. Not because I have any issue with these kind of bureaucratic processes — I think these kind of machinations are what the state should actually be doing versus alternating between killing its citizens domestically and sending them into pointless and evil wars to die — and not because I don’t like people or can’t handle small talk — I love single serving exchanges! I love to talk about the weather! I love to be an easygoing and compliant customer! — but because I have a gene-deep fear of anyone with any kind of authority over me — Yes! That includes the rude woman at the DMV intake counter! — and a well-honed fear of Fucking Something Up despite carefully and repeatedly making sure I had everything I needed.

Despite all of my dread and anxiety, both my license appointment and the vehicle registration went fine! I made two different DMV employees laugh and no one got mad at me for fumbling my papers or wearing a mask or having shaky hands. I got sweaty and uncomfortable and my license picture is an all time bad one — Have you seen a partially melted stick of butter with a mullet? Well the good people of the Minnesota Department of Safety sure have! — but the whole experience was fine. I won’t necessarily learn anything useful from this — Okay so what it went okay this one time! That means nothing about next time! — but it was nice to like, go through a bureaucratic process — one I believe in wholeheartedly! I think drivers should be licensed! And vehicles insured and registered! I think it’s good that these are part of the concept of public safety in Minnesota! — and have it work out fine, to make the appointment and have what I was supposed to and get it all done in basically about an hour. Did I feel bad for the people waiting the 3-4 hours to get served without an appointment? I did! But i also know that those agencies are perpetually underfunded and understaffed and they can’t serve the public perfectly from an empty cup, but they were all trying, even the rude, wrong gatekeeping front desk person was trying to make sure we were doing the right thing even though the thing she was telling us to do was not actually that.

Anyway, the actual point of all of this is that one of the services this particularly agency also offers — right there at the walk-up window next to the camera that took my melted butter photo — is marriage and while I finished paying the fifty bucks for my driver license, Tom Petty’s “Freefallin'” playing at a pleasant volume in the background, a couple next to me stood there and got married. After the ceremony was done all of us who were in hearing range cheered and clapped and the couple looked bashful and happy, standing there with their paperwork and their parents and it was both a little absurd — I had just listened to two guys in their late teens/early 20s have a detailed conversation about Minnesota sports while waiting to have my number called while Crystal was standing elsewhere listening to a man say that he was surprised there weren’t more mass shootings at DMVs — and also genuinely wonderful because life happens everywhere all the time when you’re expecting it and when you’re not and I really don’t know what else could be more magical.

ETA: I wrote this at the end of December and I edited and scheduled it on January 5th and then an agent of the federal government shot and killed a woman very nearby for daring to care about her neighbors being harassed and abducted. She wasn’t the first and I’m not naive enough to believe she’ll be the last.

I don’t have anything astute to say, I’m not sure that there is anything astute to be said about it, but I believe the people are stronger. I believe community is stronger. I believe we are capable of better things and I believe those better things are possible. I wish so many people didn’t have to suffer in the meantime. I wish the federal government wasn’t test driving military occupation.

If you’re able, please donate to MIRAC and food pantries that serve the Twin Cities area.

*: AI can pry the (poorly and regularly incorrectly used) em-dashes from my ass. They were mine first. Get fucked.