Two years ago, I decided to apply for my Portuguese driver’s license. My CA license was technically good here for 180 days, but after that all residents were supposed to trade it in for a Portuguese one. I had already been here four years, so I was long overdue, which meant in order to get it I might have to pass a driving test on a stick shift (which I didn’t know how to operate) and a written test in Portuguese (which I didn’t speak.)
But due to Covid, the system was more lax, and Heather was able to trade hers in six months earlier without taking any test, so I thought I’d give it a shot while that window was still open.
The first thing I had to do was get “Apostille” records from the CA DMV. That cost money (can’t remember how much), and they would only send them to Los Angeles (Heather’s mom’s house), so Heather’s mom had to ship them to us in Portugal.
The other thing I had to do was get a health exam in December of 2020, when Portugal had the highest covid rates in the world. For all the restrictions and lockdowns that year, for God knows what reason, getting your health verified for purposes of obtaining a driver’s license required you to go to the dank basement of an unventilated building for half an hour with 20 other people waiting in nearby chairs, exchanging foul air through useless masks.
I got what I think might have been covid a week later (I was oddly fatigued for three days, tested positive for antibodies a couple months later) and attributed it to that because we had otherwise been cautious (no indoor dining or socializing) back when we cared about catching covid. Eventually I got called in to see the doctor, who gave me an eye exam, asked me some basic questions for three minutes and signed off.
We scanned and sent all of the documents to the Portugal DMV which is called IMT and waited. Apparently there was a several month delay in processing, and I didn’t know if after receiving my materials they’d still ask me to come in and take a driving test. But as the months went by, I heard nothing. There were also some articles about how especially dysfunctional and backed up the IMT was, so I wrote it off to that.
A year went by, and I urged Heather to follow up with the IMT. It turns out one of the documents we attached was too large for their system, and so my file was considered incomplete. So we attached the files again and waited a couple months for a response. Which we did not receive.
When we followed up again this past spring, it turns out they did respond, but only to my old email address (liss@rotowire.com) which was defunct, now that I had left the company. So we changed the email, but then they told us my doctor’s certificate (the one for which I had possibly contracted covid!) had expired, and I needed to get another one. Luckily this was doable online for a small fee (I think it was 15 euros), so I did it, got the new certificate and applied yet again.
There were further communication difficulties, but Heather followed up again, and the person told us my file was ready and we should go into a local IMT office to get the photo taken for the license. So we walked about half a mile to the closest one, but it turns out it had moved, so we walked another half mile to the new location, but it was overrun with people, and there was no chance to get an appointment that day. Heather said I might have to wake up at 6 am and “camp out” so that I’d *only* have to wait an hour.
I decided to email our contact again to ask for alternatives, and she wrote back to say she had made me an appointment Friday, September 9 in the afternoon to get the photo taken. (Apparently they had made me a prior appointment in August when we were in Mexico City, but it was sent to the old email address.) It turns out I did not need to take the test, and I was set to get the license after all! (In the meantime I had learned to drive stick shift, but was still waiting to get the official license to drive more frequently in the city out of liability concerns.)
On Thursday, September 8, the day before my appointment, Heather had a conversation with a friend, the license topic came up and she casually dropped this piece of information:
As of July, my CA license was entirely valid in Portugal, and I no longer needed a Portuguese one! Heather asked if I still wanted to go to the appointment, and I said yes. It made no sense to do so, but after all the effort through which we had gone, how could I give up on the precipice of success?
So we went to the appointment — which was handled in 15 minutes — but they charged me 30 euros and confiscated my CA license. I protested, but they said I could not get the Portuguese one unless I exchanged the CA one.
I justified it by telling myself I could order a replacement CA one from the DMV (though due to the same email issue, it turns out, I was unable to do it online, had to call, after which they told me they couldn’t do it over the phone, but deleted my liss@rotowire.com account and told me to wait 10 days to open a new account which *should* work.)
The IMT then issued me a piece of paper with a government seal on it saying it would work as a license for now and to expect my laminated real license to arrive in the mail within six months. So I traded a perfectly good license that worked in Portugal and the US plus 30 euros for a piece of paper and a distant promise.
On the way home from the appointment, Heather and I laughed about it. We’re not idiots — we understand the concept of a sunk cost. But the idea of abandoning all our efforts so close to the finish line was anathema to something within us. I was promised a reward, and for better or worse, I was claiming it, even though the premise upon which the entire mission was based was falsified right in front of my face.
How hard it is to let go of beliefs into which we have made investment and effort! How tempting is it to value something not because it’s useful but because of the hoops through which we jumped to get it! The folly is so obvious in others, who via faulty information or outdated conditioning, chase empty validation, pointless milestones and useless credentials. I only hope in my case this was an anomaly, a one-off I allowed myself due to the relatively meager stakes.