Fasten your seat belts

I'm a very good driver. I'm not just saying this. Allstate has given me the Good Driver discount (all $1.38 of it per month) and my track record speaks for itself.

I'm probably tempting the fates, but in all my 50 years of driving I have had only 1 moving violation, a speed trap on the PCH, and no accidents. 

OK, there was time while in college that I got behind the wheel of my 1966 Dodge Coronet 400 and drove through 14 inches of freshly fallen snow and purposely took out some mailboxes in the backwoods of Syracuse. Not my finest moment but no one got hurt, least of all the Dodge Coronet which was heavier than an Abrams Tank. And it sported ribbed red leather bucket seats. Front & back. I miss that car.

So imagine my dismay when returning home from LAX, with my oldest daughter in tow, and she blurted out..

"Dad, I think you just ran a red light. I saw the camera go off."

"DOH!!!"

The consequences of that momentary, literally a split of a split second, are still haunting me. 

In addition to wasting half an afternoon at a Santa Monica Courthouse, where I was chided by former LA Mayor James Hahn (now a traffic judge adjudicating overdue parking meters), I was forced to attend Traffic School. 

Attend might be a bit of misnomer. When I was nabbed doing 51 in a 50 mph zone back in 1993, I literally did have to sit in a classroom. There, I sat with 25 other poor souls listening to a series of overly ambitious but under-talented stand up comedians, plying their wares while gussying up the DMV driver's manual. 

Note to traffic school operators: Comedy and Remedial Driver's Education do not go together. 

Belly dancers could possibly make it more palatable.

Mercifully, in 2024, the entire miserable process can be done online. Thank you intrusive technology and Coronavirus. So what once took 8 hours now only takes 4. But make no mistake it's still a hellish and childish experience worthy of nothing. 

Moreover, with my time on terra firma coming to a close, it was a painful waste of 4 hours that could have been better spent on my Peloton. Opening up my hip flexors on a yoga mat. Or toying with scammers on Facebook who think I'm handsome and interesting and want me to send them a Friend Request.

To give you an idea of exactly how wasteful, I wisely took a screen grab of the type of nonsense put forth by the Cheap Easy Fast team of driving experts. Behold...

Tedious, right? 

Even more tedious than my work at PayPal. But at least at PP,  I was handsomely paid. Mostly for writing done by ChatGPT.

Shhhh!