The DMV Is Kafkaesque, But With Worse Lighting

There are two places in America where hope goes to die: the return line at Walmart the week after Christmas and the Department of Motor Vehicles.

I walked into the DMV recently, clutching the usual paperwork — proof of identity, proof of residence, proof of being a human who has lived on earth longer than a fruit fly. The waiting room was lit by those flickering fluorescent lights that make you question whether your vitamin D levels are dropping in real time.

I took a number. It was B47. The glowing red board said Now Serving: A12. Somewhere in the distance, a baby wailed. A man beside me sighed like he had been there since the Truman Doctrine was first established.

Kafka would have loved the DMV. The Trial is just a man waiting for his number to be called, except with more German existential dread and fewer laminated forms. If Kafka had lived in Tennessee, Josef K. wouldn’t have been arrested by shadowy bureaucrats — he would have been trapped in a plastic chair, waiting to renew his driver’s license, slowly losing his will to live.

Every five minutes, the loudspeaker announced another number with all the warmth of a robot trained on tax law: “Now serving A13 at window three.” The woman three rows over whispered, “John, we may never see B10 in this lifetime.” She wasn’t joking.

I passed the time by playing DMV Bingo in my head:

• Someone with an entire filing cabinet of paperwork. Check. ✔️

• A man explaining that he sold his car “verbally” to his cousin. Check. ✔️

• A teenager sobbing after failing the eye exam because she couldn’t distinguish between a C and an O. Check. ✔️

• Me, Googling “how long can a human survive without sunlight.” Check. ✔️

• A woman pulling three cats in a Radio Flyer with a service animal sticker on it. Bingo!

By the time they finally called B47, I felt I had lived through three wars, the invention of TikTok, and at least one full presidential scandal. I shuffled forward like a survivor.

The clerk, a doppelgänger for Roz from Monsters, Inc., did not look up when she barked, “Passport or current driver’s license.” I handed Roz my license. After inspecting it like she was looking for ticks on a Bernese Mountain Dog, she glared at me and said, “Your hair is red.”

“I know.”

“This license is marked ‘Hair: Brown.’”

“It was brown when I got that license,” I said. “That was eight years ago.”

“It needs to reflect the true color of your hair.”

“Well, that would be gray.”

“I will mark red.”

Next, she asked, “Do you have proof of residence?” I handed her my electric bill and took in extra oxygen for moral support. Whew, no questions asked. She made a copy and stamped it with bureaucratic finality. I half expected her to say, “You may now proceed to the High Castle.”

Instead, she directed me to the vision screener on the counter next to me. After a thirty-two-minute tutorial on how to avoid contracting flesh-eating MRSA using a one-inch tissue paper doused in isopropyl alcohol, I pressed my forehead into the freshly sanitized monitor.

In a burst of misguided confidence, I decided to try it without my glasses. Because decades of astigmatism miraculously healed on my walk from the parking lot. The letters on the screen blurred into a line dance. I mumbled random consonants — “E… maybe O? Is that a 5 or a llama?” I blinked at the flashing lights in my periphery like a startled owl. The clerk’s eyebrows rose higher with every guess. After her third brow elevation, I surrendered, slid my glasses on, and read the letters crisply as if auditioning for Audible. She promptly stamped “GLASSES REQUIRED” on my license restrictions with the gusto of a medieval scribe illuminating a manuscript. I wanted to protest. I can see large moving objects just fine without them, thank you! But her expression said my resistance would be futile.

Then came the photograph. I marched to the camera station like a defendant to the dock, determined to at least look dignified on my new Tennessee license. But DMV lighting is less “portrait studio” and more “Cold War POW camp.” The chair wobbled, the backdrop sagged, and the clerk shouted “Next!” like a KGB agent. I tried to channel serenity, with chin lifted and eyes open, but the flash went off precisely when my face formed a half-blink, half-grimace.

There are no do-overs in DMV photography.

In The Trial, Josef K. keeps hoping for an illusion of justice; at the DMV, I keep hoping for the illusion of a flattering ID photo. Both are doomed causes.

When I left, clutching my temporary license, I felt the way Josef K. must have felt nearing his execution: exhausted, perplexed, but slightly relieved.

And the moral of the story?

In literature, the absurd teaches us about the human condition. At the DMV, the absurd teaches us patience — and maybe the importance of packing snacks.

See you in the margins,

--Bookstore Geek