Never Toss Your Go-To Material

I decided to get legit this month. Well, legit as far as becoming a proper Tennessee resident because I’ve pretty much decided to stay. This means getting a new license plate for my car. DONE. And a new drivers license. NOT DONE.

See, on my drive over to the DMV or DLS or XYZ of the great state of Tennessee, I started to feel a deep sadness about turning in my California ID. It isn’t due to expire for a good 4.8 years, but it is more than that that fed my resistance.

My hair and cheesy smile on that DL photo has consistently, and I mean 1 out of every 2 times I show the thing, gotten me attention. The kind of attention that makes TSA guards say I look like Linda Blair and waiters at Applebees say, “ha..nice smile.” It has become the only item in my comedy arsenal that produces such reliable results. I got the picture taken soon after I moved to Los Angeles and my hair was still growing out chemically induced curls from chemotherapy so I always looked like I had hot-rollered my hair. The photo quite possibly marks the greatest time of my life (minus the chemo, poverty, and 5am shift at Starbucks across from the Beverly Center).

So when I got to the Tennessee Licensing center and stood in the line behind twenty other people, I made up several excuses including the line being too long and the place smelling like wet diaper liner and I turned around and left, my Linda Blair ID still in my wallet.

My ID doesn’t identify me. Or maybe it does. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to pin myself to the confines of state borders and boundaries.  After all, I am and always will be just a world resident, who just happens to hold an astounding, unparalleled piece of personal identification (that is valid for another 4.8 years).