A sign of the apocalypse: Smooth sailing at the DMV and the cable company

Last week I felt like my world had been turned upside down. Two fundamental truths turned out to be false or at the very least momentarily changed and it all happened in one day. First, I had to go inside Time Warner for a little chat about my Internet service. I braced myself for a wait and the least receptive customer service in the free world. I was so not looking forward to the experience that I had to bribe myself to go in with a Krispy Kreme. I had gotten a doughnut, but wouldn’t let myself eat it until after I went into Time Warner.

I was gobsmacked. (Is that a great word or what? Say it out loud and then tell me if it doesn’t make you smile and feel like you’ve got some vocab swagger.) Instead of getting a snarl and a line out the door, I got a smile and problem solved in under five minutes! It scared me, like, “Oh my God, is this a sign of the apocalypse?” scared me. I walked back to my car not with a spring in my step, but with fear. What’s going on with the universe when I’m in and out of Time Warner in less than five hours, never mind five minutes?

My usual response when anything good happens to me is to think I’m dying. Seriously, I’ve told my kids that if their dad ever takes us to Disneyland and he ponies up the big bucks for an actual Disney resort it means I have two weeks to live — max. I was so freaked that my demise was imminent I felt justified in eating not one, not two, but three Krispy Kremes because who cares if your thighs rub together in the afterlife?

Then later that day, still shaken from the Time Warner freakiness, I was at the DMV with my daughter to get her learner’s permit. I had her primed for the wait from hell and bad attitudes aplenty. We also had a talk that was very Hallmark-esque with an after-school special overtone about one of the ultimate indignities of growing up: the driver’s license photo that hurts your feelings. I warned her that no matter how bad it was she should try to hold in her tears until we get back in the car. Then and only then was the ugly cry acceptable.

Bow down to the Johnson County Department of Motor Vehicles in Mission and the gentleman at Desk Five. We were in and out in less time than it took us to go through the Chick-fil-A drive-thru before our visit to the DMV. And the guy even let me fix a stray hair on my daughter, resulting in a very fetching license photo.

This was a two-fer of dismay. I had my daughter gloating, while admiring her driver’s license photo — it even looked good on the temporary paper copy — over how quick the whole thing was and intimating that I was out of touch with how the world works to think that it would take hours. All of that chatter was white noise compared to how hard my heart was thumping in my chest because this whole speedy DMV thing was another sign that the end was near.

How else could one explain Time Warner and the Department of Motor Vehicles being super friendly and lightning quick all in the same day? You can’t. I was almost 100 percent certain a meteorite the combined size of Donald Trump’s ego and Hillary Clinton’s email server was hurtling toward Earth or some other sort of galactic calamity was headed our way. To calm my nerves I went to Krispy Kreme — again.

When I got home, I didn’t know what to do. Should I be reaching out to my loved ones? Do I go online and see if any other humans were reporting similar occurrences or would that be wasting my last few precious hours or maybe even minutes?

I was in a full frenetic frenzy when my son texted me. Oh that sweet boy, I thought. He knows and now from college he’s reaching out to his beloved mother. That is until I read his text. “Mom, can you please come to Lawrence and help move some junk out of the apartment? Even better if you could start cleaning while I’m taking my final. Maybe you should bring that carpet shampoo vacuum thing, just saying.”

The world wasn’t ending after all. When you get the “Mom can you come clean” text you know everything is status quo. All is, indeed, right with your world. The whole Time Warner/DMV weirdness was an anomaly, like seeing a Sasquatch on a play date with a unicorn. I just got lucky. Instead of eating doughnuts I should have bought a lottery ticket.

This story was originally published May 17, 2016 at 9:04 PM with the headline "A sign of the apocalypse: Smooth sailing at the DMV and the cable company."