Let's cut driver's ed costs

Today, after quite a long elapsed time, I found myself in a large, general - purpose consumer junk store (Target, in fact,) the sort of place I usually avoid like the plague. And while it was as bad as it usually is, I did have a sort of an idea: for the first week of driver's ed, don't let the students drive actual cars, just walk 'em around one of these big box stores, watching the idiots who can't even push shopping carts without doing dangerous things. There's the turn - out - of - a - side - aisle - without - looking manoeuvre, the shopping - while - on - the - phone syndrome, the discipline - the - kids - in - motion approach, and so much more. In fact, you could even argue that people do anti-social things with shopping carts that they wouldn't do with cars, viz, slam on the brakes and park the damn thing crossways in the street, blocking all lanes.

I mean, you can see how this would work: instructors and students would walk the aisles, trying to avoid getting run down, and taking notes: "Now class, see what that woman just did? Don't do that!"

All of that, of course, got me thinking about my own experience with driver's ed, back in the summer of 1968. It consisted of two week's worth of training, one week in the classroom and then one week, later on in the summer, with three peers and the high school principal (earning some extra cash) as the instructor. He'd pick us up in a big old Oldsmobile, donated by the local dealer (car dealer, not drug dealer -- this was a rural school district.) Just gathering up the students used up almost an hour, since we were grouped alphabetically, not by where we lived.

After that, we'd drive to a small town nearby, park on the street, and walk around for half an hour while the principal had coffee at his mother's house. Then, we'd do some two-lane highway work, maybe a spend a little time on parallel parking, and as a special treat, duck into the state capital to experience "city" driving. I'm talking about Lansing, Michigan, here, not anywhere with actual traffic (still hasn't got any, by any modern standard), but it did give the man a slightly larger set of things to talk about. To this day, I remember when I forgot to signal a lane change. He corrected me, then said, "Let's not have any of this changing lanes without, um, following proper procedure." After nearly 40 years, I can't hear the phrase "proper procedure" without thinking of that timid, ineffective little schoolmaster. Makes me smile.