The process was so slow that many people left before their number came up. Some took a new number as they exited, hoping to come back later and have an advantage in the sequence. That didn\u2019t seem to work. The young man sitting next to me had tried it, after waiting for 90 minutes earlier that day. But when he came back, his number\u201489\u2014had already been called, and he had to start over. He got 26 this time\u2014he would be right after me\u2014and we sat together for the next 90 minutes, chatting, secretly hoping for more people ahead of us to be rejected, and commiserating about the sad state of government administration as demonstrated by where we were at that moment.<\/p>\n

Finally, they called, “25.” I did, indeed, have the correct documentation, and my transaction took only about 10 minutes, plus a $12 fee. The beleaguered clerk, who had taken quite a bit of shit from people lacking all the required docs, was very pleasant.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I had made one major miscalculation. Real ID is good for six years, but my driver\u2019s license expires in August of this year, which means so does the Real ID that I received in the mail 10 days later. I should have waited until March (or later), when I would have been within the six-month window for renewing my license. In my quest to get ahead of the game, I got too far ahead, and now I’ll have to go through the whole thing again this summer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By October 1, 2020, anyone wanting to fly domestically, or gain legal admittance to a government facility or a nuclear power plant needs to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":40609,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[128,119],"tags":[2490,120,3497],"yoast_head":"\n