There is a place whispered about in legends and dreamt about in nightmares. I had heard about this place since I was very small. My parents had warned me about this place, and it was clear to me that when I was older, I too, would have to pay my dues and put in an appearance in this hateful place. Minstrels have sung songs about this place. Bards have written poems, warning the youthful around them to steer clear of the place of nightmares. For the old among us have walked the painful path, the hot coals, the awful right of passage that life cruelly thrusts upon each of us when we become of age.

I walked into the door of that place a hopeful, happy adolescent, and retrieved from a dispenser a magic ticket that granted me admission into the pits of hell. As I checked the number on my magic ticket, a sign above the entrance to the place caught my eye,

“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

As I sat within its bowels, I felt the joy and hope of my youth began to ebb away. The longer I sat there in the uncomfortable chair that matched every other uncomfortable chair in that awful place. I felt more and more of my former hope and joy leave my body and become replaced with the heavy lead weight of dread. In a matter of moments, I would have to partake in the ritual that all my people undergo when they are my age. I took a deep breath to calm my anxious nerves. I reminded myself that though the place was like a hospital, it truly was different. I was correct. Unlike a hospital, there is no birth or joy in this place to be found anywhere. Only death, despair and the desperate cries of a people longing to be free.

The overwhelming stench that permeated the hollow of despondency forced itself into my nostrils and nearly choked me. As I struggled not to inhale the odor, I surmised that it must be the stench that results from the decaying dreams and hopes of many. This blanket of unidentifiable odors hung over the place and all who sat there, as a layer of smog hangs over San Francisco, heavy and unmoving, choking the atmosphere of breathable air.

The longer I sat in this place, the less hope I had. I would die here. I knew I would. What would they say about me at my funeral? “She went out courageously. She suffered bravely. She waited patiently for her turn, which never came. She held out as long as she could, until her body gave up the fight and a little pile of bones was all that remained in her chair. She had been patient, but it was all for not. By the time her number was called, her bones were too brittle from disuse to move and her fragile body petrified where it sat.

Many years from now, when my story is told, what will it be called? My autobiography, the documentary... they must have a gripping title. What shall it be?

I have it. Gripping, succinct. To the point.

“Death by DMV.”