No Matter How Important You Think You Are...

Jerry's recent post about his visit to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles in Indiana reminded me of a personal experience.
The small counties in this area are serviced one day a week by the DMV from the State of Nebraska. As long as I can remember they have taken up residence in our courthouse every Tuesday. They still do that. At the time of this story there were two men who had been license examiners for quite some time. At the same time I was driving a school bus for our local school and getting my Class A CDL to drive a split vehicle. (tractor/trailer) If you know anything about that then you already know that I had developed a close personal relationship with the examiners. I didn't know their names but we knew each other by sight well enough to be able to fake knowing each others names.
During one of my visits I had been disappointed by a remark that one of them had made. An elderly person had been trying get his license renewed ahead of time but had come in 60 days early. The examiner was very terse with the man and in a very sarcastic tone told him to "read right here on your letter" that you need to come in 30 days or less before your birthday. The old man shuffled out and the examiner looked at me and said "*@!*@* old people". My view of that man changed forever right there. I was thinking that someday, if he was lucky, he too might get old.
Now fast forward to the story. I was seated in the DMV room a few weeks later taking one of the myriad of tests involved with trying to learn how to be one of those *@!@* truck drivers. As I recall it was the test to get my Haz-Mat endorcement on my license.
As I was beginning the test the phone rang and whomever was on the other end of the line was obviously mad and having his way verbally with the examiner. There were a lot of lines like, "Yes sir" "No sir" "No I didn't realize I came across like that sir" "No it won't happen again sir".
After about 5 minutes the conversation had ended. While hanging up the phone he turned to the other examiner and asked, "Did you think we were rude to the lady who was in here about a half hour ago?" The other examiner said "I don't think so...Why, who was that on the phone?" The answer fully restored my faith in government on the state level. He said "That was the Governor."