Recommendations

If you take your driver's license out of your wallet, make sure you put it back, not in a bag full of other stuff. Especially if you throw that bag away.

If you throw that bag away and realize with horror--too late--that your driver's license was in it and there's no retrieving it, try not to do it around Christmas time when you have seven people coming for the holidays and you're moving right after Christmas. This is a very inconvenient time to lose a license.

If you lose your license, make sure you have your birth certificate handy, as well as your Social Security card.

If you don't have either of those, order the birth certificate and pray like heck the DMV will overlook the fact that that's the only form of ID you have.

Go to the DMV with your four cute kids and a lot of prayer--and get your license in five minutes from an obliging officer who isn't feeling too strict that day.

Yes, all this happened to me. I learned a very important lesson about properly filing away important documents. And from now on my license is going right back in my wallet the minute I'm done with it.