The Traffic School Preacher

When I signed up to attend traffic school, I read the list of potential schools and was surprised that nearly every place offered either a pizza or comedy theme (they sure have the rule-breaking American public pegged) and several, like PIZZA + COMEDY 4U TRAFFIC SCHOOL, even combined both into one super educational experience. I preferred to find one that didn't claim to incorporate comedy into the lessons, because most people that think they're funny, particularly at the traffic school level, really just aren't, and I didn't want to suffer through hours of pretending to laugh. I opted for the one that seemed the most bland, only to find out after signing up that it was a comedy traffic school, but at that point, I just resigned to my fate.

Arriving at class, I expected to find a hack for a teacher, but I was shocked to find a fairly humorous man hooked up to an oxygen tank. "Is that nitrous oxide?" someone joked. "It's oxygen," the teacher said. "I need it to live." And here I thought his oxygen tank was for recreational purposes. At that point, I realized we could all use some nitrous oxide to help pass the time here.

He explained that he had been diagnosed with lung disease and given between two weeks and two years to live. Eleven years later, eight of which were spent on bed rest, he is still alive and kicking. Then he started singing about being alive and dancing around as best as someone could while hooked up to an oxygen tank. While I was happy for him and impressed by his ability to beat the odds, his life story wore on me as it continued. I checked the time and realized that forty-five minutes had passed during which he had referred to himself as a miracle no less than a dozen times. Never once did he reference driving, the real purpose of the class, in any shape or form.

The teacher is also a recovering alcoholic, proudly saying that he hasn't had alcohol, weed, or coffee in thirty years. That's when he joined a religion that he wasn't allowed to name that required him to give up all his vices, but which ultimately improved his life. I wonder if that includes nearly a decade of being crippled by lung disease. A traffic student asked whether his religion was Mormonism. He nodded his head affirmatively while winking and restated that he couldn't say it, but that he might also happen to recommend that particular affiliation to all of us. Ever since he joined the Mormon church, he's had an angel on his shoulder guiding him through life. He could see angels on all our shoulders, too, we just didn't know they were there yet. "Can you feel them?" he asked. "Do you want to feel them?" Every student remained tight-lipped, presumably annoyed by his proselytizing. "I bet I'll have some believers by the end of class," he said.

"Moving on," he transitioned. To traffic? Not before we get several more stories about his health. Heart attack? He's had one. Strokes? He's had three. Sleep apnea? He sleeps sitting up in a chair and his wife stays up to make sure he doesn't die in his sleep. She also quit her job when he was diagnosed with lung cancer to care for him and their whole family of six lived off $1,000 a month from the government. And we all could do the same, if we'd just stop buying Starbucks. Coffee is the devil's urine, you know.

All right, now that I could produce a twenty page medical history report of my traffic school teacher, I guess we finally felt comfortable, nearly an hour and a half into the class, to finally learn about automobiles and operating them safely. Of course, the stakes had to be large to grab our attention, evidently, so the teacher made a lofty claim that if we listened to him and God, he could guarantee we'd never get in an accident again in our lives. He's managed to never be in a car accident his entire life because he follows every traffic law perfectly. It probably also helps that he was too incapacitated to operate a motor vehicle for a good portion of his life.

"Do you believe me?" he asked me. I had made the mistake of sitting in the front row, so a lot of his questions were directed at me. "Do you believe that I can make it so you never get in an accident again?" It's hard to argue with the "power" of someone who has proclaimed himself a miracle, but he irritated me enough that I wasn't going to just readily agree. "Not exactly," I replied. "I mean, that's why they call it an accident, because it doesn't happen on purpose. I think you can help us minimize the chances of getting in an accident, but sometimes that's out of your control." Some of my fellow students laughed and others semi-gasped. I really don't think the audacity it takes to question the authority of someone in a minute position of power compares to the audacity of claiming to be a miracle-worker. The teacher was a bit taken aback, but said he appreciated my honesty and said he would ask how I felt about it by the end of the class.

"You're so young," he continued. "How old are you?" he asked. "Twenty-five," I replied. "That's so young," he cried, as if that explained why I'm too naive to believe in his power. "I have a rash older than you!" he exclaimed, gesturing to lift his shirt in order to show it to me. Rudely perhaps, I said, "Please, please, I'll take your word for it" and he mercifully stopped.

He then approached a woman wearing a t-shirt with an image of Frida Kahlo, the unibrowed painter, and asked if it was a picture of Bob Marley. And I had thought I wouldn't end up laughing out loud even once. As it turned out, he wasn't joking, but I guess I can't say the class was completely devoid of comedy.

One student got impatient and wanted to know about the comedy aspect of the class. "Well, what do you want?" the teacher asked, seemingly offended. I wanted to tell him that we all appreciated him babbling about himself and his religion, but I didn't have the guts. The student countered, "I don't know, you could make jokes about Asian drivers or something." For once, my teacher and I were cringing at the same time, and I have to imagine the two Asian students weren't too crazy about the comment either. "I don't like racial stereotypes!" the teacher said. "Just stop that! We're all Christians here, and we don't discriminate." Whoa, then I was cringing again. I'm pretty sure being a Christian was not a prerequisite to the course. Also, given the apparent diversity of the students, I'd put a lot of money on the fact that not everyone in that classroom was a Christian.

Plus, the teacher was hardly the epitome of racial sensitivity. At one point, he had us write our personal information on a roll sheet. An Indian man (which is to say he is of Indian descent, not Native American) turned in the paper, then doubled back to check he had included the correct information. While he re-grabbed the sheet, the teacher asked, "Are you an Indian giver?" and chuckled. Do I even need to mention that I cringed again?

According to the teacher, our most important lesson of the day was to know what to do if we got in an accident, which ultimately was useless information considering he guaranteed it would never happen to us again. Since police will often not come to the scene for minor accidents and "people get raped all the time when trying to exchange information" (no data on this claim was provided), we were to immediately call a friend and give as much information about the car and other driver as we could in case the worst happened. For five minutes, he used a falsetto voice and "demonstrated" how to make such a call. He had a little too much fun with it, continually referring to the other driver as a dirty pervert. At the end of the demonstration, which I feared would never end, he smiled and said that now if he were to be raped, his friend would be able to tell the police who had done it. Feeling fully sassy by this point, I pointed out that the only description that he had given his friend was that the other guy "looked like a pervert" so that wasn't really too helpful. The teacher insisted that he just abbreviated the description part "for time" and would otherwise give race, hair color, eye color, etc. I probably shouldn't admit this, but at that point, I daydreamed about the tube that connected him to his oxygen tank accidentally wrapping around his miraculous neck.

Coincidentally, he took his oxygen tank off, stood up, and put his hands on me without even asking first. He explained he wanted to demonstrate some self-defense movements in this situation, but I'm pretty sure he also wanted to retaliate for how uppity I had been. I just froze up and let my glare explain that I didn't appreciate being touched and he soon backed away. I think he misunderstood my glare, though, because he told me, "Don't worry, I'm not funny!" "Oh, I know," I said. I realized that by "funny" he meant "gay," but rather than get offended, I decided to pretend that he had meant funny in the amusing sense, and that I was merely agreeing that he was the worst comedy traffic teacher ever.

I quit paying attention about then, but perked up again when a fellow student made a dismissive comment about the angel on the teacher's shoulder, which the teacher, naturally, didn't like. He then resolved to tell us a story that would have us all believe in our angels. Apparently, whenever he would sit in the front passenger seat of the car, his wife would sit in the backseat immediately behind him to better take care of him. That day, his angel told him to have his wife sit on the other side, so he instructed her accordingly, and she obeyed. While crossing through an intersection, another vehicle ran the red light, striking the car in the place where his wife usually sits. That angel saved her life! Oh, poppycock. I wanted to point out that he had said he had never been in accident, but I had already resolved to stay clammed up the rest of class, so I was glad when another student called him out for this contradiction. The teacher explained that he wasn't the one driving, so that doesn't count. You know, had he been driving, I'm sure he would have been able to avoid another car running a red light and striking him. He is a miracle, after all.

Fortunately, I wasn't required to do as many hours as most people, so I got to leave shortly thereafter before I received the entirety of his wisdom. The teacher is in a cushy position, too, because as infuriated as I was with his religious agenda and bullshit lessons, you ultimately just feel so bad for him you don't have the heart to complain to the company and put his job in jeopardy. Even if a lot of his stories are made up or exaggerated, he clearly hasn't had an easy life, and I couldn't bring myself to send him and his shoulder angel to the unemployment line with oxygen tank in tow. Plus, while I don't think I learned a damned thing about being a better driver, I did ultimately feel the incentive to obey the traffic laws so I'd never have to spend time with this comedic genius again. Perhaps the ends justify the means. If there is a next time, however, I'm opting for a legitimate wannabe comedian. Give me a hack that tells me jokes about how the chicken crosses the road only after checking its mirrors and signaling.