Flashes of Panic

I may have to bury a longtime grudge.

Every time I’ve moved inside Massachusetts, I’ve had to tangle with the RMV. They’re a wily bunch; they make some things easy (changing address can be done on their website, and they then send you stickers to apply to your license and registration.) Then they make other things really, really tough.

My last two moves were both at the beginning of September, which ran me in to a rough coincidence: I needed to change address with my insurance company and the RMV, plus renew my insurance (at the new address, with a different premium,) and renew my car registration. In both cases, the complications with the insurance company meant that the RMV demanded confirmation that I was actually insured before renewing my registration; I needed to schedule a trek out to Waltham for a stamp from the insurance company. (There must be a more efficient method for doing this. I’ve done it twice now, and it’s tedious, pointless busywork for all involved.)

I managed to jump all the hoops in 2005, but this year things were too hectic, and I didn’t get around to getting the stamp and mailing the registration form until last week, when a policeman asked me to move the car due to construction on the street and noted, “By the way, your registration has expired.”

So I got the stamp that day, and got the registration in the mail. Deed done, no problem.

Today, on my way back to Somerville, a town policeman followed me for a way—just pulled up behind me, I think, but then he must have noticed that I didn’t have up-to-date stickers on my plates. (I’ve occasionally gone a few weeks between getting the stickers and getting them on the plates, also not a good practice.) So he blinked his lights, and I pulled over and provided license and (gulp) registration. “This has expired,” he said. I explained that the check, so to speak, was in the mail. He was unimpressed.

But then he came back from the cruiser and gave me back the papers and nothing else a warning. Turns out the RMV backed me up; my renewal was already in the system, and all I was guilty of was not being able to prove that my registration was valid.

So I suppose I can’t grumble so much about the hoops I had to jump through to keep it so.

Now Playing: The Disillusionist from Priest = Aura by The Church

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