An adventure in license renewal, starring 51 quarters and a Willie Nelson look-alike
by Louise Gray Leonard | illustration by Harry Blair
The week following my 21st birthday, it was the time to tackle the bane of any newly legal adult’s existence: a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles to renew my driver’s license.
The film Zootopia portrays DMV employees as sloths, painfully slow in completing even the simplest task — but that was not my experience. The people who helped me were quite quick on their feet. And yet.
When I arrived in the waiting room, almost every seat was taken and the line snaked halfway to the door. I grabbed my ticket and took a seat in a concerningly lumpy chair. The man next to me glanced over. “Ugh. The DMV, right?” “It’s the worst,” I agreed.
He noted that my process would probably be easier because I had a neatly organized folder with all my documentation. I felt a little glow of pride for being well prepared. A few minutes later, my number was called. I handed over my paperwork and answered the questions correctly.
For a brief, shining moment, everything was going smoothly. The man helping me, we’ll call him Mark, informed me that I owed $52.75. No problem — just as expected!“Great, here’s my card,” I said, smiling.
“Well, here’s the thing,” Mark grimaced. “Our card reader is broken.”
He directed me to an ATM two doors down, and I jogged over, pulled out $60, and returned slightly out of breath.
I placed the cash on the counter. Mark looked nervous.
“The thing is, we don’t have change, and we can’t keep your change because we’re state employees,” he said. I asked what I was supposed to do and was met with a blank stare and a shrug. That’s when my guardian angel appeared from around the counter, wearing a neon yellow vest.
“Hon, we’re going to figure this out,” she said. “I need you to run down to the Family Dollar. Find the cashier who looks like Willie Nelson and have him break one of those twenties. Break ‘em with quarters. We need them. Tell him Tonya sent you.”
As instructed, I marched to the Family Dollar and found the cashier who was, indeed, a dead ringer for Willie Nelson.
“Hi!” I said, flashing a smile. “If it isn’t any trouble, could you please break my $20 with quarters?”
“We can’t do that,” he flatly replied.
“But… Tonya sent me.”
He perked right up. “Say no more.”
Minutes later, I burst back into the DMV with two fistfuls of quarters. I dropped them on the counter triumphantly. Mark sighed and offered a curse: “Now I have to count.”
Close to tears, I offered to help. He took me up on it, and I dutifully counted out $12.75 in quarters, sliding them across the counter one by one while Mark and Tonya watched. Three hours after my arrival, I finally exited the DMV with a horrendous license photo and a slight headache.
On my way out, I saw my friend from earlier, calm as ever. We shared a nod and I wished him luck.
But more than luck, I realized, I should wish him patience — and a little help from new friends.
This article originally appeared in the July 2026 issue of WALTER magazine
