Hit and Run

Today is one of those days I dread every year: license plate renewal day. Actually, that day for me was three days ago, but as always, I was late. In Indiana, no matter how many vehicles a person has registered, the renewals all come due on the same day. That can be quite hard on the bank account for a family that has two or three nice, relatively new cars.

We arrived at the license branch and received our number: 81. Now being served? 64. Not a bad wait, really. I think it took about 15 minutes for our number to be called.

First on the agenda was to have a lien removed and a new title issued on our GMC Jimmy with Wife's name added to it. It took the clerk three attempts to get this right. With me telling her the spelling of Wife's name, and spelling it out on paper as well, the clerk somehow still managed to omit an 'E'. No problem, the transaction was easily voided and rerun -- this time the clerk forgot to remove the lien from the title. STRIKE TWO! Again, simply void the transaction and rerun it. Third time's a charm, and she seemed able to properly renew both registrations without further incident. We were in and out of there in less than 45 minutes -- that has to be some kind of record for the license branch, even with the errors.

It's amazing the kind of people you see in the license branch. I guess everyone has to drive, and therefore has to have both a driver's license and license plates on his or her vehicle, but why is it always the dregs of society who choose to renew their documents on the same day as me? People come stumbling into the building in dirty clothes looking like they haven't bathed in weeks. Those who may have seen the inside of a soap package recently are the one's who venture out in public considerably underdressed, and I don't mean just for weather conditions. There really should be a law about the things some people call clothes these days.

Having left the license branch and run a few other errands, Wife and I decided to take Son to Toys 'R Us for a new Little Tikes basketball goal. He's 18 months old, and has the throwing arm of a pro (no, I am not just a biased father speaking). While we were in Toys 'R Us, one of the dregs from the license branch -- probably the adolescent with half his boxers showing who had just passed his driving test -- apparently followed us into the lot, because when we came out, we found this:
What kind of idiot would do such a thing and leave without making it right? I'd like to think no one would be so negligent, but it obviously happened, so I must be naive. Unless it was just some young, rap-listening, bass-thumping, low-pants-wearing, new-driving adolescent who's so unaware of his surroundings that he didn't even feel his car rock when he hit ours and didn't hear what must have been at least a barely audible _cr^un_ch sound, even over the incessant bass booms that will certainly deafen the boy -- if not all of us -- long before the age of retirement.

It's a sad thing that this can happen in this, the greatest land of all. If only I could get my hands on the delinquent who did such a thing. But instead I have to get my hands on some touch-up paint before the weather makes this more of an unsightly mess than it already is.

What do you think?

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Joe