Making Waves: Little quirks of life

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Everyone, be sure to renew your driver’s license. It’s pretty important.

If you want to fly anywhere or drive a car you need a driver’s license. To renew your DL or a state ID you need your birth certificate. If you don’t have one, to get your birth certificate you need a valid driver’s license.

But if your driver’s license is expired you can’t get your birth certificate to renew your license. So you can never get a license, and you can never drive or fly again. You’ll be stuck on the island for the rest of your life, and you can’t even drive.

Life’s full of these potholes. I know someone who is bedridden, but he needs a picture ID to get his medications. He can’t get out of bed to come to the DMV to to get his picture taken to renew his license, so he can’t buy his medication. Sometimes you’re just out of luck

Here’s one, Ohana means family and hana means work. Families take a lot of work.

Doing business on our island is frustrating. If a county worker in Kona doesn’t know the answer to a question he tells you to call Hilo. When Hilo doesn’t know, he says to call Kona.

If neither one knows, they say to call Honolulu.

You call Honolulu and they never answer the phone.

Most jobs need an education, but there’s no education requirement for public office. Anyone without an education can walk in off the street and be the governor.

It gets better. If you have a felony, you can’t get hired at any job, that is, any job but president of the United States. You can be a criminal with a felony and still be president. Sounds about right.

Here’s one about substitute teachers. Subs are grouped into three levels according to their education. Level III is the highest, ones with a teaching credential. Level II subs have a college degree.

Level I is anyone over 18, with or without a high school diploma. A high school dropout can be in school teaching your kids right now.

Concerned about illegals getting into the United States? According to Hawaii Free Press, there are 20,000 illegal aliens in Hawaii, with about 1,600 from Mexico. They all flew here on a plane with beverage service, having a cold beer. It sure beats sneaking across the border.

Figure this out. Hamas and Israel are in a terrible religious war, even though they both believe in the same religious figures, Jesus, Moses and Abraham.

What a world. That’s why we need aloha, especially now.

Dennis Gregory writes a bi-monthly column for West Hawaii Today and welcomes your comments at makewavess@yahoo.com