The Southwest Voice

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     “And …ACTION!”

     My actions on this Sunday morning –– running out of my house, jumping into my car, and racing to a nearby Holiday Inn with an anxious look on my face –– would have been fitting in a movie in which I play a married man having an affair. In this movie, my unknowing wife hands me a travel coffee mug and tells me, “Hurry so you’re not late!”

     Once inside the secret hotel room, I am well-received, despite my lateness.

     In reality, the story was different, but the actions were the same. I was speeding because I was an hour late to traffic school. And, because my life often works in a series of reversals, I was sentenced to traffic school in the first place because I had been speeding.

     The class was held in a small meeting room on the first floor. While traffic school allows you to erase points from your driving record, the DMV strives to make the experience not only painful but memorable. Receiving a beating in a dark alley is bad enough, but imagine being sent a T-shirt of the event, just to make it memorable.          

     Someone has decided that instead of training you hands-on to be a better driver, it’s more cost-effective to punish you by making you listen to a lecture. Usually, it’s a reformed outlaw with bad breath and an outfit from the Larry King clothing line at Sears.

     He clears his throat, revealing a voice made raspy by chain smoking. “Good morning class…” His job is to convince you that life is about studying the intricacies of the current DMV guide. “This is what I have been missing,” we are supposed to say. “And this is why I am a low-life.”

    Had I broken the law in California, I would have been able to “attend” traffic school online from my computer at home. In my pajamas or even naked, if I wished. But, I got my ticket in Arizona, so I was required to attend a minimum five-hour class. My particular class was eight hours, the three extra hours amounting to torture.

     Stepping out of my car at the hotel and realizing that I had seven hours to go, my whole attitude changed. Didn’t I owed it to myself to be another two hours late?

     Now, I simply strolled into the hotel, studied the marble tile in the lobby, admired the wallpaper in the hallway, and then strolled into the meeting room.  

     The fiercely positive part of me –– two lonely brain cells –– asked, “Why become bitter? Can’t we just make the best of this?”

     My remaining three bitter brain cells shouted, “No!” and so I became rebellious. Breaking a speed law by 16 MPH and carrying my rebellion into traffic school made me feel like a hardened criminal.
     The room was quieter than I had imagined. I could have walked into a wax museum. Although the class had just started, the attendees resembled an exhibit created under the theme: fatal boredom. Everyone appeared frozen. Younger people leaned at odd angles. Their faces were devoid of emotion, their pristine sport jerseys and white tennis shoes completing the wax museum appearance. Middle-aged men and women folded their arms or held onto their purses and bags, props bespeaking lifelessness. 

     While I hated the very idea of traffic school, it was hard to dislike the teacher. Maybe it was his resemblance to evangelist Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham. Of course, I had to discount the obvious character differences: the preacher had fervor; the teacher seemed geeky. Sideburns were painstakingly shaved off, as though he was ashamed of them. It was the thorough shave common to the five unlucky women in the world who have beards.

     With a good-natured giggle, the teacher stood up and clapped his hands. “Okay, class, welcome to Saturday and Sunday Painless Traffic Schools.” The word oxymoron came to mind. The name, “Saturday and Sunday Painless Traffic Schools,” appeared on official school stationery. While his Miami Vice tropical shirt, baseball cap and shorts suggested youth, his voice carried in it the rough sand of one’s weary 40s. These features made me suspicious, because they appeared to be calculated to hide his age. I questioned everything. Was the dark hair beneath his ball cap dyed or was it a toupee? If so, was it a full toupee or just a patch of hair that came with the ball cap?

     When the instructor ignored or didn’t notice my lateness, I started to like him. I also started to hate myself for not taking advantage and showing up even later. Had he taken issue with my lateness, I would have told him, “Sorry. I had my license taken away, and I had to walk from Tehachapi … and … I have leave three hours early to make it home before dark.”

     A question entered my mind: Would I die of boredom? I mean, eight hours! Maybe I could enter the temporary death depicted by the other attendees’ lifeless postures, and wake up after all financial debts and judgments had been erased.  If I were lucky enough to die of boredom, it would probably be a slow death, rather than an instant, painless death. The school would only deliver on the promise of a “Painless Driving School” if I were to agree to stay alive. I have never actually heard of someone dying of boredom. Or maybe I would just die thinking about dying of boredom.

     To my delight, the teacher immediately began telling the class personal stories. So, I sat up.  

     He had a number of past lives, all of them punctuated by law-breaking on the roads of his youth. At age 12, he got his first traffic ticket for speeding and not having a license. He’d been driving a motorcycle and had misread an “End 40 Mile Zone” sign. “I rounded up to the next 50. How was I to know?”

     In later years, he was pulled over for running red lights, making illegal turns in residential neighborhoods, and racing. He used to build hotrods, something I had trouble imagining him doing. But, this was many years ago, as he explained. He didn’t share the stories to impress us, but out of kindness; he wanted us to stay awake.

     Once, as a teenager, he’d left the house in a fit of rage. Within one city block, he he’d broken five separate traffic laws. The officer gave him the option of choosing just one violation. He chose driving without a registration, figuring that he could fix the violation prior to his court date. What he’d done was prove his street smarts. He earned the confidence to negotiate traffic tickets in court later and win.

     The downside was that he became addicted to speed. And, an expensive habit developed. Opening his eyes wide to take in afresh the force of his youthful indiscretions, he continued. “I tried to beat the system as I grew older, but I was in danger of losing my license and getting thrown in jail.” Tickets caught up with him.

     The engine behind his voice idled down and he looked at the ground. He explained that, due to an aging body and what he called a “desire to avoid getting hit in the ol’ pocket book,” he was forced to convert to good driving.

     The teacher’s combination of bad boy and mild manners reminded me of serial killer/cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer. I had seen televised interviews in which Dahmer, shy and soft-spoken, described his grisly murders without remorse or shame. Serial killers and road warriors are alike in at least one way: both never let on to their real craft. To the naked eye, both men appeared kind, and I understood how someone could trust Dahmer prior to becoming his dinner. As I watched the Franklin Graham look-alike, I thought about Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims. These victims did not have the benefit of seeing the valuable props common to cannibals: the loin cloth, the spear, and the bamboo reed driven through the nose.

     Normally, I would equate such a teacher’s presence with “community service,” rather than a lifelong teaching ambition. It’s like seeing a serial arsonist on his knees, planting baby trees in a new park. “What are you doing?” you might ask him.

     “Oh, I’m just passing time before the next big fire. Gotta replenish our natural resources!” But something, I thought, had actually changed this man. I just didn’t know what. Then he would tell another rowdy story, and I would be left another impression: his presence here implied a hard-won victory for the DMV. 
                               TO BE CONTINUED