You don't HAVE to

My tabs expired today. I put off renewing them as I'm moving to Texas and I didn't want to have to pay for a full year of tabs here, and then move down there just to re-register my vehicle. So nonetheless, I procrastinated until the last moment to renew my tabs.

I walked into the DMV today and told the lady my predicament to see if she had any answers for me. She answered with, "Well, we don't do any prorating." Then she continued to mumble on about something incoherent about my situation. She surprisingly was nice as usually they aren't nice in there. Finally after her incoherent mumbling she finally says, "It's up to you!" I asked, "You mean I don't have to renew them here?"

I waited for her to give me some options, but instead of giving me options such as, "Texas should give you tabs before you move there." or "I'll give you tabs for $4 just for the next three weeks" she continued to tell me that, "You don't have to renew them!" She sounded quite happy about this. I didn't feel like I was understanding so I said, "You mean I would just be driving with expired tabs?"

"YEP" came the answer. Strange. This was all very strange to me.

I finished with, "Well, I'm not going to risk hundreds of dollars worth of a ticket to drive from here to there. I'll renew them."

"Okay" she cheerfully said as I wrote out my check.

So strange. Is this the advice they give to all people? You don't have to renew your tabs? I guess I had never thought of it before, but I suppose you don't ever have to renew tabs. We just do it because it's the law. I mean we could just not do it and risk getting a ticket. Or we could save that $47 and perhaps get away with it. It's a gamble. I'm not much of a gambler.

One step closer to Texas.