Join Me in Snarkville

I spent most of the day yesterday having flashbacks to high school detention. You see, I had traffic school* yesterday. Let me say that again, I had 8 hours of traffic school are really 6 hours and 40 minutes of instruction. Wait, instruction? I was supposed to be instructed on something?

Seriously, the only thing I learned in traffic school was that it wasn’t set-up to teach me to be a better driver. It wasn’t set-up to be a refresher course for those of us who have gotten lax in our driving styles. It wasn’t even to teach us of the rules of the road that we may have forgotten. Oh, no, it was punishment. Seriously, I felt like I might as well have sat in jail for 400 minutes. It wasn’t painful, but a complete waste of my time.

Here’s the thing, I mistakenly thought traffic school was supposed to put people on the road in a safer condition than they started that morning. I fear that after forcing 40 people to sit through the class I was in, we were all not in the condition to drive home. I was nodding off in class during the last hour and that might have been a problem, since it was also during the movie about how driving sleepy is as bad as drinking and driving. Fun stuff, huh?

So, there are about 10 choices when it comes to traffic school. Oh sure I could have taken it online in my PJs, but I’d been told that it was a timed thing where you’d be in front of a computer all day and the test was actually hard. I had been told by people who’d been to traffic school before me, that I should take one of the comedy schools because at least they attempt humor. So, I followed the advice.

I went to a school whose idea of comedy traffic school was 2 (yes, I said TWO) jokes, one of which was an old blonde joke; watching a Goofy Movie (yes, from the vaults of Disney) on road rage; and making fun of the students when possible. Oh yes it was delightful, why do you ask?

I want to tell you that there were all this great blog fodder from the day, and perhaps there was. I could talk about Al who is old enough to have owned a Model T when new and could not see the poster sized certificate when it was walked over and put three feet in front of him. Yes, I waited after the class to make sure that he wasn’t driving anywhere near me. Or there was Chrissy, who was confused by the carpool lane and the passing lane. She kept trying to understand why she couldn’t drive in the passing lane, but could drive in the carpool lane — aren’t they the same lanes she asked? (My eyes might have stuck in the top of my head from rolling so hard.)

For the record, no one in the room had DONE whatever the cop had pulled us over for. We all were there to have to point pulled off our license. We were promised in exchange for our money a guarantee pass on the exam (which would have only been less difficult if he read the answers instead of the questions) and the magic of wiping the point off our record. Yes, I passed. Yes, I’m sending in the form to the court to get this messy business over with. I don’t think I learned my lesson on why I shouldn’t speed — though I’ve learned a valuable lesson on not getting caught. (Please tell me that is not the point of traffic school.)

* Yes, I was pulled over and ticketed for speeding a few months back. It was me alone in the car, but still totally embarrassing. This is first ticket I’ve ever had to pay (got a ticket when I was a teen, but I fought it and won) because I couldn’t bring myself to go to court and say I wasn’t speeding when I knew in my heart I was.