"Full name?"
"Olubowale Victor Akintimehin."
"Can you repeat that?"
" Olubowale...O-l-u-b-o-w-a-l-e Victor Akintimehin...A-k-i-n-t-i-m-e-h-i-n."
"Okay, thank you. Please look straight ahead, keep your head level and wait for the flash on 3."
"Okay."
"1, 2, 3. Okay, Mr. Akin...Akin Mr. Akin... I'm sorry. Mr. Olubowale, you can relax now and your license is ready."
"It's fine and thank you. Have a good day.", I say to the officer in the dmv, looking down at my license. Glancing over the picture, I turn my attention to my name ensuring that my name is spelled correctly.
"Checking the spelling huh?", a young lady laughs. "They generally are on point with spelling difficult names. Umm, while you check, can you just let me squeeze by to get to the window? I'm J58."
"J58, huh? Oh okay well excuse me, Ms. J58." I smiled at her, moving aside. "And you seem to right about this name thing."
She laughed, as she passed by. " Thank you and I should know, my name is not for the faint of heart. I wish my name was J58, but my name is Chrysanthemum Francesca Herrington."
I narrowed my eyes. "Really?", I start to laugh, covering my mouth trying not to. "Excuse me, my fault. I'm not laughing at the name, but the irony. Chrysanthemum? You think that's bad. My name is Olubowale Victor Akintimehin. I believe I got you beat."
She handed the officer her information, as she continued to talk to me like she had known me before. Of all my times of being in the dmv, I've never ran into her here or anywhere else. Here I go with this destiny, man. My philosophy is simple. I think you meet everybody for a reason, a lesson or a blessing type situation.
"Hey, Chrysanthemum I'm going to be late getting to work if you don't quit distracting me with all this interesting conversation." I lick my lips, before I make my move. I still get nervous as hell, before talking to women sometimes and this is one of those times. "How 'bout you give me your digits, so I can call you to see if they spelled your name right?" That is not going to work, if it does I'm the man. I'm a man, but am I the man?
"Deal. Give me your phone, Olubowale.", she says to me as I hand my phone over to her and I watched her tap her name in. "You know, if you wanted my number from the beginning all you had to do was ask."
I'm the man! I'm the man!
"True, true, but I didn't want it then. But when I found out your name was almost has bad as mine, I had to get it.", I smile over at her. "I'll be using it though."
"You better."
I didn't hear nothing else after that. Love at first sight, hell nah, but attraction at first sight, oh yeah. I would be lying if I didn't think she wasn't gorgeous, but I've seen pretty girls before and they never held my interest. Looks are overrated though.
"Alright, bye Francesca. Don't forget to smile for the flash.", I tell her as I jog to the door, not waiting for her to respond. I was really going to be late for real and a man really needs this job at Harvey's. The bills don't pay themselves and today I'm the man, because a trip to the dmv wasn't as aggravating as I thought it would be.
*******
Excuse any errors. Thanks for reading.
