Oh, the sweet naivete of an untainted driving record. Cruising around at unknown speeds, recklessly changing lanes without signaling and driving as if you owned the road. How quickly the blanketed bliss of ignorance is pulled from beneath your tires when you're sucker-punched with a speeding ticket worse than any boxing nun could ever imagine.
It all started innocently enough. Leaving the crap heap of Tucson later than expected after a concert, the idea of working at 8 a.m. the next day was slowly starting to creep up and strangle my hold on responsible driving habits. Stepping on the gas to flee Dungville as quickly as possible, bitterly ironic red and blue lights accosted me not two miles onto the freeway.
I'll spare you the gory specifics of exactly how much over the speed limit I was driving, but suffice it to say 37 isn't just a number exclusive to Kevin Smith movies.
After convincing Officer The Man not to arrest me for endangering the lives of half-asleep/half-No-Dozed truckers, I was left with three options:
1. Pay a fine and get points on my record. Whoa there. I'm in the Barrett Honors College. We do not get points on our driving records. We just set up meth labs in our residence halls and pay off administrators with promises of future endowments.
2. Contest the ticket in front of a judge. I could have stolen the habit off of the boxing nun and still been eaten alive. No thanks.
3. Go to traffic school. Well, without another tolerable choice, I decided to pay the piper for my blatant tempting of automobile fate.
I walked into Arizona Defensive Driving School this past Saturday at 7:30 ... in the morning. Obviously, I wasn't excited about being there, since everything I'd heard about traffic school from people who had been there was horrible: Make sure to lift heavy weights in the yard, become somebody's girlfriend fast and never, ever drop the -- wait a minute, that's different advice.
Anyway, seeing bleak-looking faces matching an even bleaker room, I was not exactly expecting a day of rollicking merriment.
I have never been more wrong.
Our instructor, Dennis, said he had 18 years of experience in this job, which amazed me, as he managed to spend as little time as possible talking about driving safety. Instead, we spent the first hour discussing how potentially to get insurance decreases without actually reporting that we had received a citation: He suggested we place a napkin over the telephone receiver so our voices couldn't be tracked.
We watched an early '90s driving video hosted by none other than Robert Urich and featured cameos by A-list celebs such as Barbara Mandrell, Perry King and Candice Cameron (who at the time of production was not even old enough to drive).
We spent 20 minutes before lunch visually diagramming possible places to eat, but my favorite part of the day was the reading of all 51 participants' citations. Speeding for him, rear-end collision for her -- the list continued, retelling the events that had brought us all together.
Soon we learned we weren't just traffic offenders. We were comrades-in-arms, fighting the foe of Good Driving. With each ticket read to us, everyone experienced what it was like to be a team. You could see people get excited when they heard "71 in a 55" and "failure to obey a traffic control device."
Friendly smiles were shared for those who went above and beyond disregarding the safety of others, and a slow clap even began for one man who sped right past a stopped school bus. Riding the wave of exhilaration, Dennis grabbed his keys and yelled: "They can take our licenses, but they'll never take our will to speed!"
Thunderous applause erupted, and we ran out of the building ready to take on the opposing troops and win the day.
OK, so that didn't happen, but I still managed to learn I wasn't the worst driver out there. And if that's not Miller High Life worthy, I don't know what is.
Heather Hull is a communication junior who's now $125 poorer. Reach her at heather.hull@asu.edu.
