He was about three or four inches taller than me which made him near six feet and still growing, if he would just quit smoking. The tobacco breath was the only thing less than scrubbed-clean about him except maybe the heavily gelled hair and a few pimples. Still, he exuded fresh youth and a certain openness you don’t find in people older than twenty. Standing behind me at Motor Vehicles, he bragged about how he was registering his first car, which he’d gotten for a really good price.

“Fifteen hundred dollars, and only 12 thousand miles on it,” he preened. I gushed approval of a great bargain, which primed the pump for even more friendliness. He seemed high on life, filled with the kind of first-car joy that sends a teen into ecstasy. We could have chatted for a long time, but I was next in line and got called by one of the clerks. I pulled myself away thinking, I love that about young people, they can be so unbounded and spontaneous. I was sorry to be separated from the nice kid with the cigarette breath.

“OK, take this form over to the table and fill it out,” said the clerk without looking at me. I noticed she had the most beautiful silver-blue hair I had ever seen. Hope my hair is that pretty when I go gray, I thought.

“You can come back to the front of the line as soon as you are done,” she was oblivious to my admiration of her hair. I was tempted to issue her a compliment, but her officious manner stifled it.

My smoker friend was next. He strode confidently up to the desk to register his very first car. I felt for a moment like his mother, watching him take his first giant leap toward mankind. Then I overheard one of the saddest exchanges of my life.

“You’re under seventeen. You can’t register a car in your name without written consent from your parents,” the silver-haired lady posited.

The next five words sliced through the hum of red-tape and DMV bureaucracy:

“I don’t have any parents.”

Time stood still. This was a beat out of sync in the midst of the mundane. I don’t have any parents. To me it was almost like saying, I don’t have a mouth or I don’t have either lung. Something totally basic was missing, something that everyone needed but he would just have to do without. My heart flinched.

Nobody else seemed to notice. They should have looked up (he said it loud enough for the whole place to hear). The women should have murmured quietly with small tears forming in their eyes and the men should have looked at the floor, shaking their heads. At least for a minute, people. Didn’t you hear him? He said, “I don’t have any parents.”!

“Then you need the written consent of a legal guardian,” the clerk snapped. If she had showed any less humanness she could have been mistaken for a robot. Suddenly I didn’t notice the silver hair, I noticed her face; hard, ugly, bulldog-ish, totally bereft of emotion except a certain perpetual spite.

“I don’t have a legal guardian,” the boy rolled his eyes. I could almost hear his thoughts—don’t you get it lady? I’m alone in the world, I have no one. And I’m trying to survive. I need this car to get to work so I can buy food to feed this face that no one else will feed. Just squeak me by, lady. There has to be a way.

“Then you’re a ward of the state and you need written consent from them,” the bulldog barked, again with no flicker of emotion.

Great, a “ward of the state!” I thought, The kind of label that gets slapped on people who wander up and down institution halls wearing drool bibs. How edifying of you to tell our young man that he is a “ward of the state.” What a fitting appellation with which to send him off into manhood!

I realize that the cold, hard legality of the situation could not be compromised. But a little mercy–a tender look, a pat on the hand--would have softened the blow of unyielding facts. Tragically, there was no mercy in the heart of this representative of justice. Now the young man reacted, scooping up his papers and heading for the door, which he reached in about three long steps, cursing under his breath as he went.

“Next!” she barked.

Before you condemn her, realize there was a greater crime. I wanted to bolt out after him, to run to his side and look up into his red face with, “Kid, I’ll be your mother. . .and God will be your father!” but the silent chains of convention held me. What could I say that would fit? “Hey, do you need a friend? Come over to my house for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!” or “Boy that lady was mean, but my family will love you!” In his condition, the tobacco kid might have spit in my face.

I should have risked it. Why did I let what was “appropriate” keep me from doing what was clumsy and Christian? Because I’m essentially just as cold as the silver-haired DMV lady.

It was a lesson in unseen, uncodified moral responsibilities. He was the only one who appeared to be outside the law, but of the boy and her, she was the real criminal. She didn’t see that it her harsh, unfeeling manner was what makes the world a sometimes motherless place that churns out cigarette-smoking, angry young men. Of the two of them, who really outside the law—God’s law? She was, because she was older and could have administered justice with compassion rather than cold officiousness.

But of the three of us, I was the greatest reprobate, because I know more about God’s love than either of them, and I wanted to keep my place in line.