‘I went down to the Department of Motor Vehicles/ To get my license renewed…..”
The official line is I get better with age, like good whiskey, but tell that to the camera. Getting a new photo ID is like being confronted with ghosts of Christmas future, and it’s never pretty.
“You could have renewed online,” Memphis Earlene reminds me.
“I wanted a new photo ID. One that didn’t make me look like an aging Soccer Mom with Chipmunk Cheeks.”
Memphis Earlene corrects me.
“Soccer Grandma” she says. “So what?”
Blues women are proud, not vain. I’m not there yet.
“Soccer Grandma died of fright while sucking on a jaw breaker,” Memphis Earlene says when I show her my new photo ID. Then she laughs.
Blues women don’t need license to do anything. Blues women prefer to leave the driving to their chauffeurs. Not all suffering is blues worthy.
“But I look so O-O-O-ld. And my birthday’s coming up,” I say.
“Plenty of dead people wish they had your troubles,” says Memphis Earlene, who stopped counting when she hit 100. “Now snap out of it. You’ve got e- books to sell.”
Blues for Beginners: Stories and Obsessions by Judith Podell—-available on Amazon.com and Smashwords.
Memphis Earlene 
One thing no clerk at any DMV understands (or for that matter, hardly anyone else who insists on recording our images for posterity) is that women must be shot slightly from above and also at a slight angle. Anything questionable under the jaw, whether signs of turkey neck or the equally dreaded double chin, disappears and the angle helps highlight cheekbones vs. chipmunk-itis. It’s not you, honey. It’s poor photography. I’m just saying.
Oui oui– you always say it best . ‘Many dead people’ indeed would love our problems. Cheers to the ‘French Housewife’ in all of us. And I totally agree with Kate M. about the DMV…