For want of a license…

Light and lively news is hard to come by this week. Fortunately, Representative Dino Jones has given us something happy to hang our hats on: he’s proposed that when the police give you one of those expensive yellow love notes, they don’t snare your drivers license in return.

As they say in the south, it sounds like a mighty pregnant idea to me. Which is to say, a good idea (some things must be translated from the Southern vernacular. I spent a solid year wondering what the heck a pregnant idea was.)

I ran afoul of this crazy kink in the law during one of those star crossed days when nothing would go right. A rotten day in Saipan translated to a rotten day in Guam, since, having earned a ticket from the DPS, I had to postpone a business trip. Renting a car in Guam would have been impossible without my (confiscated) license.

Bummer. I hastily rescheduled the trip, phoned to rescheduled my meeting…and was met with scepticism.

“Why’d they take your license? Do you have, like, 10 tickets or something?” I was asked.

“Nope. They take it here whenever they give you a ticket,” offered me.

“No they don’t. Nobody does that. If they took your license then you’d be screwed,” came this insightful comment.

Well, no kidding, pal. Why do you think I’m calling in the first place?

The whole event seemed to cast a vague air of suspicion in Guam. After all, there’s something fishy about a guy who gets his license confiscated. That doesn’t happen to normal people. That’s Jerry Springer, trailer trash, scofflaw stuff. Some reckless punk gets his license snared after racking up a dozen vehicular misdemeanors, and his life slides down hill from there. He can’t drive to the barber so his hair gets long and gross.

He consequently loses his job. The tattoo he was getting done piecemeal on the installment plan goes unfinished, and the guys at the pool hall mock him for it. So he gets in a fight with them and 14 of his teeth are knocked out.

He can’t drink beer–-the coldness hurts the raw, nervy sockets where his teeth used to be–-so he turns to crack cocaine as a substitute.

While on a crack binge, he goes over to the neighboring trailer, impregnates his neighbor’s wife, and kills their dog…no, wait…stoned out of his mind, he impregnates the dog, and kills the wife.

His neighbor, needless to say, takes great umbrage at this, since a knocked-up hound is absolutely worthless for hunting.

The dog eventually gives birth to a slobbering mutant retard, which, of course, registers as a U.S. Democrat. The mutant goes on welfare, moves to Miami, Florida, and is too stupid to be able to use a ballot. This sparks a controversy that fuels a full-blown constitutional crisis, and that’s how we wound up with today’s foul state of affairs.

Yes, for want of a license, the nation was lost. What better time, then, to take a look at this drivers license thing? A pregnant idea indeed (woof, woof).

Stephens is an economist with Stephens Corporation, a professional organization in the NMI. His column appears three times a week: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Mr. Stephens can be contacted via the following e-mail address: ed4Saipan@yahoo.com.