Full Status Newbie

Friday was a sad day for me. It was the day I traded in my Texas driver's license for a New Brunswick license. My plan was to just lie and say that I had lost my Texas license because I really wanted to keep it for sentimental value. Unfortunately, my illegal plan was foiled.

Becoming a full status Newbie caused a lot of rage for D, and I got sucked in too. It all began when I was at work and D went to register his van that he had imported from Texas. At Service New Brunswick (SNB, where one goes for all of their New Brunswick needs), he was told that he had to have insurance on the vehicle before he could register it. He then went to an insurance agent where he was told that he couldn't get insurance without a NB driver's license. So, he went back to SNB to get his license. Apparently they have a system that is connected to all North American DMVs and when the woman at SNB entered D's driver's license into the system, it said, "cannot find a record" or something like that. Apparently, if there is a problem with the system, it usually says "system down." Because it was not saying, "system down" the SNB woman became suspicious that D's license was fake. She told him that he would have to get Texas to fax confirmation of his driving record. D called the Texas folks who are responsible for such things and the woman told him, "We do not fax to Canada." Really? There isn't even a country code involved. Just dial 1 and the fax will go through!

This is when I get a furious phone call from D spewing obscenities. I suggested that we both go in together, with our matching driver's licenses and our driver's abstracts that we had gotten from Texas before we left. That would perhaps make her believe that his driver's license wasn't a fake. She entered my license number into the system and it also came up as "cannot find record" also. I guess this was a bit more reassuring since both licenses were not coming up in the system. Our driver's abstracts were dated for May 25th, which was 5 days before we left Texas. This was also not acceptable because "anything could have happened between then and now." She suggested we get Texas to fax new ones. We explained that the Texas folks "do not fax to Canada." She could tell we were getting really frustrated, so she called the head office to see if the abstracts were acceptable. After about 20 minutes and several transfers of her phone call, she got the approval to issue us new driver's licenses. This information was conveyed to us with the very stern warning "When the system is back up and they investigate your licenses, if there are ANY issues, your NB licenses will be revoked immediately." She made us feel like criminals. WELCOME TO NEW BRUNSWICK!

After our marathon session at SNB, we went to get insurance, and then came back to SNB to register the vehicle. The whole process took about 5 hours from start to finish, but now we are official Newbies.

Also, can I nominate NB for the worst license plate slogan in Canada?