THE HORROR OF LETTING YOUR D.L. EXPIRE

Last week, after receiving and filling out our postcard to renew our license tags, I discovered that both mine and Dean's drivers licenses were expired on 2/28. So on Thurs. we drove to Jay, OK to renew them. We went to the TAG office. They said since they had EXPIRED we had to go to the Driver Testing Place. We went. They are only open on Fri. & Mon. in Jay.

Friday a.m. we drove again to Jay (25 miles) and arrived at 11:30 a.m. The ONE guy working there said they were full up, and we should come back Monday, and they open at 9 a.m. He didn't have time to fit us in and didn't tell us to come EARLY, way before 9.

Monday (today) we were back in Jay by 9:20 a.m. The hall outside was completely filled up with people. Guess what? YES---they were "full up" again. and he couldn't take us until Friday!!! And then we find out people had gotten there as early as 7 a.m., and some people had been there 5 times already!!! The absurdity of the situation about did us in. We wanted to drive LEGALLY, and also to obtain our tags!!! We then drove to Broken Arrow-----found the Driver's Testing Place there(we didn't have to "test" but we had to have our original birth certificates input into the system). They had several people working at this office and it only took about 1/2 hour. But we still didn't have our driver's licenses, oh no----not yet!

We then had to take pieces of paper with our info, and our old drivers license stapled to it, back to a TAG Agency. Only THEY can actually issue the license (but they can't substantuate your birth certificate!). We knew we didn't want to go BACK to Jay yet again, so we found out a TAG agency was only a couple of blocks from the Testing Place, and FINALLY we succeeded in getting our new driver's license after 3 trips to Jay, and one to Broken Arrow.

Lesson Learned: Oklahoma Bureaucracyis absurdly inefficient---and to never NEVER let our licenses expire ever again.