Sunday, February 8, 2009

Drivers Ed (The Jake Story, Part 1)



In the Drivers Ed program where I live you have to go through 30 hours of class time, 12 hours of driving, 6 hours of observation and a whopping 40 hours of driving with a parent.
The class room time was stressful. Forty kids, one room, one teacher, eight bad Drivers Ed movies… You know the type. Once we got a “new” movie. It was in black and white. And not as an artistic touch.
Observation hours are a joke. We have been observing people drive since we were born. I think we get the point. So I use my six hours of “observation” for six hours of uninterrupted texting.
Ahhh bliss.

Getting 40 hours of Parental driving is actually quite the difficult feat. Seeing as Daddy is deployed and Mom, oh dear lovely Mom, never planned on teaching us to drive in the first place. That is a Dad Job. Plus, Mom is from California.
California is warm.
Here, there is no such thing. Here it is cold and snowy 9 months out of 12. Dear Mom, from California, is not used to snow, or driving in it. It scares her a little, which is okay, because it is a very scary thing. But that fear combined with the reluctance to teach children to drive... It’s a very serious matter indeed. To help with the 40 hours, we hired a neighbor.
It is the 12 hours of driving that are the most difficult for me. So far, I’ve done seven. Seven. Long. Awful. Terrible. Hours. With Jake (false name to protect the innocent, even though he's not innocent and I would not mind him being kidnapped (very difficult) as he is mean and scary.)
Anyway, in bullets and parentheses, Jake is:

-easily three hundred pounds
-in need of a a brush for his crazy hair (it needs to pick a direction to point; all of the directions is not okay.)

-loud

-a listener of awful 80’s music. (There is nothing wrong with 80’s music, I love Billy Joel and the Talking Heads, but there is a bad side to every decade, and that is what Jake likes. I think it is secretly a torture device… He is the plotting sort)

-the plotting sort

-a foot tapper (tapping is bad by itself, but combined with the bad side of the 80’s it’s the most annoying thing ever, plus he is always tapping around his built in Drivers Ed Break and it always makes me think he is about to stomp on The Break.)

-a gum chomper (go ahead, chew that gum, but do NOT chomp it, I do not need to hear your saliva, thank you very much)

-rude

-a story teller (I can not describe the stories in my parentheses. Sad, isn’t it? But I promise I will tell you. However, I have quite a bit of homework to do, so I will share with you these fantastic stories sometime in the near future. This is also a suspense tactic, because now you’ll have to come back to my blog if you ever want to know what crazy things Jake tells me about. Or I could tell you now if anybody wants to do my homework for me… Probably no takers.)

Anywhoo.

Toodle Pip

9 comments:

  1. I can just imagine and then I stop myself because I can imagine it all too well. The suspense! You would probably get a bad grade if I did your homework so I will have to be suspended...in...suspense!

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  2. Lol... I love all of it. When I did drivers ed we had to actually DRIVE with our teacher. He would take us to buy donuts and fall asleep EVERYTIME. Its not good when the teacher falls asleep.

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  3. p.s. my word verification was "frisiest" - do you think that was some kind of rude comment about my hair? I mean it's RAINING... what do you want from me!

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  4. Now I'm waiting to hear the stories!!

    Here they make the students sit through classes (required for graduation, even if you come from another state and are already licensed!), then the parents do their 40 hours in the passenger seat... all this before you get behind the wheel with a paid instructor! I guess the idea is you should be a decent driver by the time you get to the folks you have to pay to ride with you. Seems backwards to me...

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  5. We pay for all driving instruction here--though it is only six hours. My thought the first time one of the driving instructors came to pick up one of my kids? If I wasn't paying him a hundred dollars, I'd be yelling "run!"

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  6. I'm looking forward to meeting you "IRL" on Monday!

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  7. Welcome to the blogosphere! Can't wait to hear the driver's ed stories. You on facebook?? Look me up if you are....I have lots of pics of the Griffith kids on there.

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  8. hahah sister you make me laugh. I love the whole part "why the heck do we need observing hours? we've been observing our parents drive us everywhere for the past, sixteen years" That never occured to me before... haha

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