1,000 Gifts

#41 on 1,000 Gifts List:

My expired driver’s license.

I went to the bank to cash a check today. The teller says she can’t cash the check because my driver’s license has expired. What? This is news to me! My first thought was, (right after “why didn’t I get a reminder in the mail?”) “Ugh! I don’t want to put this on my to-do list today!”

Then I remembered the trick I learned from the book The Chocolate Diaries –– replace the I HAVE TO on your to-do list with I GET TO and the task won’t seem as daunting.

And it really worked.

And then I remembered something else: a story I read in the newspaper this week. A woman was jailed for several days in Saudi Arabia for driving. Never mind that she didn’t have a license. Women aren’t allowed to drive at all! That was why she did it. In protest. It’s part of their control-thy-woman-culture. Keep women dependent on men and they are less likely to do something crazy, like say, DRIVE A CAR. But that is a whole other post that I will save for a later date.

So, today I am thankful that I got to get my driver’s license renewed. I am once again reminded why living in the United States of America is a blessing and how I complain about things sometimes when I shouldn’t. That is the point of this list…to remind me of the things (small and big) that I take for granted.

And, today I am thankful to that waiting in line at the DMV was only mildly painful.