DMV and Millionaire

Rosalie and I went to the DMV to renew our drivers’ licenses just after noon today, and were greeted by a roomful of people also there to do their DMV business. We filled out papers and after taking an eye exam were given a number for line waiting. But not just numbers in a numerical sequence, instead, numbers preceded by letters: A, B, I, J, L, M, N, and others I don’t remember. Then we sat and waited for our numbers to be called. But neither we nor anyone else could figure out how many were ahead of us, the lettered numbers called out bouncing all over the place across the alphabet. Why would they do that? At least, with a straight numerical sequence one could determine how far down in the line he/she was. Was this a plan deliberately created to keep us in that linear dark? I think so. I wonder what psychologist came up with that plan. An hour and a half later we both had our new licenses, with new and even uglier photos than our previous licenses held. And on the way out we had to dodge by an old gentleman who was soliciting signatures for a petition protesting animal mistreatment. Also soliciting contributions after a lengthy description of what the petition would accomplish and how the contributions would be used. We love our animals and don’t want any animals mistreated, but we already give $21 a month to the ASPCA. So we did our dodge.

We’re both avid Who Wants to Be a Millionaire watchers, watching both daily shows, the early one with reruns and the later one new and live. And we were both anxious to see how they would conduct the Millionaire tournament they’d been hawking for the last two or three months. This was to be a contest among the ten highest winners over that two or three month time, with one of them guaranteed to win the million. We both assumed they’d have each of them going through the fifteen questions to see who would win the most, and that one would win the million. Wrong. At the end of the Monday show, one of the ten got a chance to answer a million dollar question. But—and here’s a gigantic but--if they answered wrong, they’d forfeit what they’d won on their previous show. I was shocked, puzzled, and finally angry at the stupidity of their setup. The woman who had to go first chose not to lose her original $50,000. And I can well imagine that the other nine may give it a long look before they too decide not to risk their previous winnings. I love Meredith Vierra, but if it was her idea to do it this way, I love her a lot less.