I'm tired of people telling me things I should have known, but was happier not knowing

My drivers license expired last month. (I found that out when I was applying for a Macy's card to buy a suit. I handed the clerk my drivers license, and after she looked at it for a minute, she looked back at me and said, "Did you know this has expired?")

Anyway, because I neglected to remember to renew my license before it expired (when I could have done it online easily and painlessly), that meant I had to go to the DMV in person to get the job done.

I finally made it last evening, filled out the form, and waited for my duly-appointed turn as "C324". When my number was called, I ambled up to the window, and handed over all the requisite materials. The nice DMV lady started processing my form, and casually asked me to take the eye test while she did the paperwork.

When I looked into the viewer, my first thought was "Man...I must be tired. I can't get my eyes to focus." My second thought, after I had regrouped and refocused, was "How the #### am I supposed to read those little blobs when they all look like 3 letters at the same time?"

I took a guess at reading the first line. The pregnant pause that followed (during which I assume the nice DMV lady was trying to figure out how the heck I got those letters off the first line) seemed to last for hours. "Um...no. That's not right," was her reply, finally. "No, really?" I thought to myself. I took another shot, which, if anything, was probably less correct than my first attempt.

I tried to explain to the nice DMV lady what I was seeing in the viewer, thinking at this point that there was some mechanical glitch in the mix. She called a nice DMV man over to help defuse what I'm sure she was considering to be a potentially volatile situation by now. The nice DMV man took me through the whole dance again, and even went so far as to ask another nice DMV man one window down if his eye test viewer was working. He confirmed that it was, but the little blobby multi-letters were in that viewer as well.

"Your eyesite is not good enough for you to be driving," the nice DMV lady said. "Right," I thought to myself, "as evidenced by my numerous moving violations recently. WTF?!?" After that, it gets kind of hazy, but suffice it to say that I left the DMV last evening without a renewed license, but with the pity (and possibly a little disdain) of 3 nice DMV people.

So apparently I'll be getting glasses soon, because until I do that, I'm driving without a license.

Now, I have 2 main problems with this whole thing (2.5 really...there's the whole vanity thing, which I count as .5 of a problem, because it's just a visceral reaction, and I'll get over it):

My first problem with this whole thing is that this introduces a whole new category of hassles. Getting my eyes checked, getting glasses, getting back to the DMV, having to now worry about optometry-related things, and so on.

My second problem with this whole thing is that this is the first major organ in my body that's betrayed me. No longer will I be able to blithly answer "No" to the question of "Do you wear glasses?" No longer can I maintain the illusion in my head that I'm not getting any older. And it also begs the question of where the next betrayal will be. And, of course, now I feel like I can't see anything at all.

So I have an appointment with LensCrafters this afternoon. My wife thinks this is all snickeringly funny. She's worn glasses for most of her life.

On the plus side, the suit looks great.