Madness at the DMV

I promise I didn't make this blog to vent anger and frustration but this was an instance that I wanted to share. Anger in pregnancy is not good, normally I am not a very angry person but when i'm pregnant it makes me more primal with bloodshed on my mind… So i'll tell a story of what happened recently. My husband has only been in the USA for two years now, and when we first met he didn't speak hardly any English. We met in May 2012 in Brigham City Utah and since I had very little knowledge of Spanish, we communicated primarily though Google Translate.

Within 4 months of being with me he was speaking basic enough english to get by and by 6 months we are having full conversations in english. I was stoked, he learned fast and I have been so proud of him. He has an accent that I understand and many other American's don't though so I have been working to clean up his pronunciation. My husband finally naturalized in the USA and received his green card in December of this last year (2013) so now he is legal to get a drivers license.
Since we have been living in Nevada for work he has been just working to get it here before we return to Utah and then he can exchange it for a Utah License. Nevada offers the written exam in Spanish after all. He passed easily and has been driving me everywhere with his permit. I feel he has done a good job and i feel that he is ready so I have been pushing him to take the driving skill test to get his actual license before we move out of here in March. When we went to LA last week, he drove the whole way, his only struggle is changing lanes and gauging distance of cars and blind spots.

We had to wait over a week for an appointment available at the Sahara DMV in Las Vegas, so we booked it. When we got there Roilan was hearing all sorts of complaints by the mexicans in spanish saying how that DMV is really strict and how one guy got failed for going slightly under 25MPH in a residential road, or how someone failed for having their blinker on for too long before changing lanes... I told Roilan not to listen and to just have his own experience, listen to the teacher and don’t rush anything.
So I sit down and Roilan goes with the teacher and I am VERY confident that he would pass... Less than two minutes Roilan comes back and says the teacher said he was finished and failed and he had no idea why. I asked the teacher what happened and he screamed at me that Roilan was in the car and the teacher was checking the lights behind the car and Roilan started reversing so the teacher failed him instantly...
I asked Roilan “Why on earth did you reverse” and he says “The guy told me to Back up, so i did.” the instructor was yelling that that was a lie and that my husband is hopeless... As we were walking out the door, I am totally confused and Roilan asks me “Hope, what exactly does Backle Up mean?” I stopped in my tracks, Roilan continued “I honestly thought he shouted at me to Back up, but since he is Chinese I figured he just threw the L in the word because Chinese do that, even in spanish...” I turned around and went marching back in the door.
And I went up to the guy and I said “Hey, listen, you said a word that he didn’t understand, I have never told him to “Buckle Up” I only say “Put on your seat belt” my husband honestly thought you were telling him to Back Up. The guy tells me my husband is stupid and should learn english and I fight back and say “He knows english you ignorant ape, Buckle up is a slang, one in which he DID NOT KNOW, how about you use PROPER ENGLISH especially since you deal with so many immigrants here.” The man and I went at it for a while and I called him a racist because of how rude he was being... Finally a different female worker told me to leave before security was called and I finally gave up... after saying to her “Your lazy worker didn’t even give my husband a chance, he failed him because he didn’t understand an english slang used by the instructor and not because of his driving skills, all i want is for him to be given a fair chance, if he fails while driving I will stop complaining but we had an appointment and you didn’t even take him out!” She asked me if I wanted to set up another appointment and I replied “We HAVE an Appointment right now!” and she says “Sorry he failed...”

I finally gave up... What could I do? I had no idea. And I cried, much to Roilan’s frustration but the situation really upset me... I have never dealt with as many assholes in my life as I have met here in Vegas and San Diego.... Utah always felt so safe to me because I really rarely met assholes. Roilan and i really have some shit luck with a lot of people. I always want to believe humans are inherently good but they learn bad but lately I just want to push people out and keep them out after quite a few instances we’ve been through recently... I guess the good thing that came out of this situation is Roilan’s english vocabulary expanded by one slang term of “Buckle Up.” We have booked another test at the Henderson Location for Tuesday since the wait for the Sahara location was over 2 weeks for next availability as well as we have heard nothing but good things about the Henderson location… I hope it's true and that Roilan can just get a fair shot to pass or fail without prejudice, impatience, or screaming chinese men… I have a headache!