was thinking of this in the shower just now...
i grew up in a little town away in the hills, but i went to college in lexington. the whole time i was in college, i kept moving around from place to place (in fact, i'm still doing that), so i kept my hometown as my permanent address. sounds simple enough, eh? so then i turned 21, and had to get a new driver's license, since my old one ad just expired... since i was keeping my permanent address at my parents' house, i needed to go to my hometown to get a new license. however, i had classes and work on all weekdays, and the licensing office wasn't open on weekends, or indeed thru decent hours on weekdays, so the earliest time i could make the two-hour (one-way) trek back there for my new license was spring break. my birthday in in january. hmm....
so an interesting thing happened... they sent me a new, valid license with no picture. it was a standard kentucky automobile driver's license in all ways except that it did not include my signature and in place of a photo of my head it bore a picture of a piece of white poster board on which someone had written in blue magic marker "valid without photo."
i didn't know anyone could do this. i was quite amused, to say the least. so were my friends. it looked so much like a fake... we had a gig at a local club one night not too long after i'd gotten this new id, and i showed it to the bouncer while we were waiting for the sound man... "hey, if somebody showed you this thing as his id, what would you think?" he looked it over for a second, puzzled, and then said "i'd tear it up, man. this can't be real." then i showed him the old "under 21" id with the same birthdate and all and explained the situation. he'd never heard of it. i've never met anyone who'd heard of such a thing.
alas, i don't have it anymore...
Sun Oct 17 12:06:55 EDT 1999