The DMV

So there I am, sitting at the DMV in Hollywood at lunch today. I lost my wallet (money clip) over the weekend and needed a new ID. It was one of those situations where I ordered a pizza from a restaurant down the street, and was so excited that I skipped all the way home with my steaming hot box of pizza, devoured the pizza like a 3rd grader, and then woke up the next morning with my wallet missing. Who knows what I could have done with it. Maybe I threw it on top of a house with all the pizza craziness going on.

So I'm getting a new license at the DMV. It's the one in Hollywood, so I'm the minority. I came prepared with my free copy of Entertainment Weekly (for some reason they just started sending it to me) to keep me busy. So I'm sitting there, just minding my own business, reading about a reunion photo shoot for the movie The Princess Bride (one of my all-time favorites).

And then this voice a couple chairs down starts talking to me. "This place is way less busy than the DMV in Oceanside. You would think Hollywood would be busy, you know?" I look up and there is this gorgeous, dark haired, dark skinned Caribbean girl who doesn't look a day over 21. If it was a TV show, I would have looked behind me in the opposite direction to see if she was talking to someone else.

So I smile, respond, and we're off & running. We're talking about music, Chicago, careers, weekend activities. She's sweet and nice; I'm starting to think I could have fun with this girl. And what a classic place to meet someone - the DMV!

She's Manager of her apartment complex, and I ask where the apartment is, and she makes a sick face and says, "Not in a very good area." I start thinking maybe she isn't the sweet little girl from Oceanside that I'm envisioning. I got the sense she was living in Compton or Watts. Strike one.

Then she gets up to get a piece of paper, and I see it. A huge tattoo that takes up most of her back. Uh oh. Strike 2.

And then the deal breaker. This cute little kid wanders over, probably 2 or 3 years old, with a box full of candy corn, and starts yelling at her, "Mommy, mommy, I want to draw!" Strike 3.

It felt like a TV show due to the sequential order of each discovery. Once I saw the kid, I looked at her, she looked at me, and I kinda did a Larry David end to the conversation: "Well, alright."

The irony is, although I wasn't going to ask for her number, I probably would have given her my card and said something like, "Shoot me a note if you want to grab a drink sometime." But without my money clip, I had no business cards.

So when my number was called, I stood up and said, "Nice chatting with you." She said, "You too" and I got the sense she was disappointed that it was going to be our last interaction. I kinda was too.