California Drivers License. 1987.
In the world of junk drawer clutter old driver's licenses are high on the list of items that people tend not to throw away. This is especially true if you were one of the lucky ones to have had a good photo taken of yourself while getting yours. In such cases the old license not only serves as a memento, but also stands as proof that you were once young and, in fact, quite quite good-looking! Though the picture on this old California drivers license can’t make a claim for being my best, it was, nonetheless, the one I got stuck with when I lived there.
I confess that the document had been handed over to a few police officers in its day. It was during the course of receiving a traffic ticket that the cop would invariably remark on the cluster of signatures I had amassed on the reverse side of the license. Resembling a miniature graffitied wall, these were the names of acquaintances I had made with whom I had asked to sign the license as a way of remembering them. Its blank-white backing gave rise to this practice and if I met someone that I especially liked, I’d simply ask them to strike-off an autograph. Though the names on the back have faded over time, one remains. It is probably for this reason that the license had never met with the trash can.
It was while on a dinner cruise up the Hudson River in 1993 that, at some point during the journey, I lost my wallet. A man sitting at the table behind me had found it and after matching my face with the photo on the license, returned it. The man told me he couldn’t help noticing that we both happened to share the same zip code out in California, and, judging from the address, we used to live right around the corner from one another. I explained to him that I no longer lived on the West Coast but kept such things in my wallet for the sake of nostalgia. He admitted to having the same penchant for saving such items so, having found a comrade, we began regaling each other with tales of our wallet crap. Afterwards, I asked the man if he would sign the back of my license—as was my custom, and he agreed, provided that I signed something in his wallet. A strange fraternity was thus born.
It was only the following morning that I realized that the person I encountered was the actor Dudley Moore. Equally strange was knowing that 'ol Dudley was now walking around with my John Hancock in the seat of his pants. If there's a moral to this story, I don't know what it is. But one thing's for sure: you never know who you’re going to meet on the high seas. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Gee, I wonder if he knew Shirley?
