Today, an era ended. I officially traded my Texas swagger for an Oklahoma “Okey-dokey.”

I switched my driver’s license.

I walked in, sat down in front of a woman, she looked at my papers, and sent me to the one chair reserved for photos. Barely 15 minutes from entry to exit. Three miles from my house. No app telling me when I was allowed to show up. No line snaking through a building the size of an aircraft hangar.

In Texas, you schedule days out — months if a driver’s test — and pray the system doesn’t go down on your day. If it does, you haven’t wasted a whole day. You’ve wasted a whole day and your will to live. There’s a substation near most Texas neighborhoods for plates and stickers, but for a license? You’re probably driving 25 minutes to the mega-processing center and clearing your calendar. Here, I had the choice of many locations. The office I chose handled everything. One stop. One very efficient woman who probably wished I’d stop complimenting the process.

The guy behind me had his required documents on his phone. He emailed them to the nice lady and they printed them for him. Both methods work. One involves planning ahead. I’ll let you guess which one I prefer.

I did not ace the eye exam. I want to be clear about that. I passed — barely — but I read the “just a line short of blind” line, and apparently that’s good enough to drive. Nobody seemed alarmed. I appreciated their restraint.

They also gave me genuinely useful advice: go for the 4-year license instead of 8, because renewal is free after 65. In Texas, I might have paid extra just to avoid coming back. Here, I almost want to return.

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We’ve lived in Oklahoma for almost a year and a half. My wife was still technically on a Texas payroll — with perks tied to her Texas address — which gave us a convenient excuse to keep the fiction going a little longer. When that chapter closed and a new opportunity let her be honest about where she actually lives, the last reason to delay went with it.

So I kept the Texas license. Not for legal reasons. For sentimental ones.

As long as it was in my wallet, I was still a Texan. There’s a low-grade smugness that comes with that, and I hadn’t realized I was addicted to it. I liked our community, our neighbors, the restaurants we knew by heart. Oklahoma has been kind. Oklahomans are genuinely good people. But we haven’t found our Mexican place yet, or our Italian place, or the one spot we’d drive across town for without discussing it first. My wife asked where I wanted to eat recently and I said Chick-Fil-A. She wanted somewhere nicer. Neither of us could name it. That’s the whole problem right there.

The restaurants will come. I know that. My patience just didn’t get the memo.

The real reason I finally made the switch: I want to vote here. We watch Oklahoma primaries and bond issues play out on TV and I have no voice in any of it. I’ve said for years that if you don’t vote, you can’t complain. I meant it. Time to get in the ring.

So now I’m an Okie. Officially. I’ve got the license to prove it, and I only had to squint a little to earn it.