And, well, I am! So I take the carry letter in and the first lady looks at me with this irritated look on her face as I explain I am there to get the gender on my license changed.
"Really?!" she says in the most snotty voice she can manage. I am used to this kind of behavior from this particular DMV service station... I usually go to the one in the same city I go to school in because they've always been nothing but friendly to me, but the one I went to... well, I just went there to avoid the extra trip. I expected this from them because they're always like that. She gives me a form to fill out and I swear to Gods sort of "flicks" the ID at me, as if she wanted to throw it like an inaccurately-gendered ninja death star.
I go to the next woman, who is very friendly, but her entire job seemed to be taking pictures and not dealing with icky trans people and stamping forms all day, so I guess I can see that.
I go to person number three and say I need to get the gender marker changed. "Court order or our error?" she says, also very cranky sounding. "I have a carry letter," I explain, and say that because I am in a formal gender program it should be fine. She calls a couple people asking if this is all she needs before telling me to sit down and going in back for somewhere from 20-40 minutes (probably closer to 20 minutes but five minutes in a DMV service station is like two hours elsewhere). She briefly comes out I guess to get something, I stand up and she says equally crankily "If you'll just sit down, we'll tell you when you can come up." I get really irritated and call my Dad saying that if they don't do it I don't have the patience to stay and reason with them and we'll have to go to the other DMV, since he'd be driving past there anyway.
Finally they come out and she says, yes, totally legit, they found the statute, and she can change the license. Oddly at that point she was almost overcompensatingly friendly toward me, smiley, that sort of thing. So maybe she just thought I was trying to scam the system or something and when she realized I wasn't it was golden.
Plus, I'd be a crankmaster if I worked for the DMV, too.
It was actually, except for ninja-star-woman who I think was that way to everyone, an overwhelmingly positive experience for this particular DMV. Keep in mind that I am not used to walking in here and seeing people actually smile, usually it's like they ban the edges of your mouth from rising beyond a certain level.
On a different note, it seems like because it's "driver license official" my Dad might actually start trying to use male pronouns for me. Which isn't that surprising because it was the same story with my legal name change. Once it was legal, it was "real" for him.
Anyway, that was my day.
Happy Trails,
-- Jack
