For three days Robert chased fun in the Bay Area then realized he had nowhere to go but the home he\u2019d been so anxious to leave.\u00a0 Driving back on blistered and dreary Interstate 5, he repeatedly inserted and ejected rock and classical CDs that no longer roused but irritated and urged him to conclude seventy miles per hour was too slow: seventy-five would be all right, even eighty for a few seconds, enough to get away from slow drivers then catch more he\u2019d also have to pass.\u00a0 Soon he didn\u2019t need the speedometer anymore.\u00a0 He was fleeing through an endless headache zone when a California Highway Patrol officer materialized by the freeway and began frantically swinging his arm.\u00a0 Robert thought, rather hoped, the officer was motioning to move on get out of here quick there\u2019s a bomb or something just get away.\u00a0 Nevertheless, he eased from the fast lane, where he\u2019d long confined himself, into the slow and decelerated to sixty-five.\u00a0 The CHP didn\u2019t remain standing but entered his cruiser and passed those Robert had, then pulled in behind and turned on the lights.<\/p>\n
Sure, Robert complied: here\u2019s my license, registration, and proof of insurance; I\u2019m a middle class guy, and a well-scrubbed young man like you knows there won\u2019t be any problems with me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were going ninety in a seventy mile an hour zone,\u201d said the officer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guarantee I didn\u2019t know.\u201d\u00a0 Several times hitting eighty must\u2019ve later made ninety feel like eighty.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwenty miles over the limit, you\u2019d have to go to court in Firebaugh.\u201d<\/p>\n
That sounded like some place between Neptune and Pluto.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got to give you an infraction.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t want you to have to drive way out here, so I\u2019ll write you up for eighty in a seventy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI appreciate that.\u00a0 By the way, how fast can you really go, legally?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe speed limit is seventy.\u00a0 But you can usually go seventy-two or seventy-three and be okay.\u00a0 A good way to judge things is if everyone\u2019s passing you you\u2019re fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019ll help.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo will traffic school.\u00a0 You can take it online.\u00a0 If you\u2019re eligible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, before you reenter the freeway, build up speed on the shoulder then check over your left shoulder to make sure you\u2019re clear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robert moved slower than everything but big rigs and, preoccupied and embarrassed, didn\u2019t notice the fecal fumes from massive cow pens all mortals dread passing on I-5.<\/p>\n
Online the following week, he paid a hundred eighty-eight bucks for the ticket and a sixty-four dollar administration fee for traffic school, of which there are scores charging under twenty for online courses. \u00a0\u00a0Blessedly, there were no glitches or he\u2019d have had to use those institutional phones whose automated voices keep nailing you with inane instructions when you need something else that can only be explained to humans too often sequestered behind cold technological barriers.<\/p>\n
Robert scanned instructions and concluded the course would be easy.\u00a0 He could probably select the right answers from four choices without studying but the computer warned it required every page to be read and otherwise irrelevant data would be buried in most chapters to ensure line by line reading and every chapter test had to be completed with a perfect score.\u00a0 He noticed the first obstacle, about how many cows were slaughtered to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year\u2019s supply of footballs, then answered all six driving questions correctly but forgot the number of cows sacrificing for gridiron glory.\u00a0 He guessed five hundred, an incorrect response that sent him back to the start of the chapter with the admonition state law required all material be read again.\u00a0 No way.\u00a0 Robert scanned through the pages a few seconds each, hammering the page-down key with his left hand and clicking the next-page arrow with his right.\u00a0 Okay, it must\u2019ve been fifteen hundred.\u00a0 No, not that, either.\u00a0 He shrieked and again ripped through the chapter in two minutes.\u00a0 Now he had a fifty-fifty chance.\u00a0 No way was the NFL offing seventy-five hundred cows a year; it had to be three thousand.<\/p>\n
On to chapter two.\u00a0 This time he didn\u2019t notice the sentence about which is the only fish that can blink both eyes.\u00a0 It\u2019s probably the catfish, a uniquely cool character actor.\u00a0 No, then perhaps it\u2019s the eel.\u00a0 All right, zip through the chapter and guess the shark.\u00a0 Fine.\u00a0 He was assimilating the driving material, which contained a number of things he hadn\u2019t known, but not seeing insipid little sentences his mind instinctively excluded.\u00a0 Otherwise, he wouldn\u2019t have needed three attempts to determine tigers have stripes on their skin as well as their fur.<\/p>\n
In chapter four Robert missed his first driving question, one he can\u2019t remember, but was proud he deduced, since he hadn\u2019t seen it before the quiz, that in most advertisements the time display on a watch is 10:10, a mellow two-handed spread rather than both-hands-together times like 12:00, 6:30, and 5:25.\u00a0 Whatever the elusive driving answer was, he nailed it only by process of elimination, on the fourth guess.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d probably agitated the school computer by circumventing review requirements for it presented a video that made his computer go round and round trying to open the video before the enemy computer shut his down.\u00a0 This happened several times, forcing Robert to reboot and say unquotable things before he began calling the customer service representative who denied such a phenomenon was possible and noted their records showed Robert was spending no time at all on most chapters.\u00a0 Evidently, no clock credit accrued when studying was followed by a whiff.<\/p>\n
Robert began reading more slowly, and though he hadn\u2019t seen the critical information in chapter five he got it by concluding \u201cI am\u201d, of the available choices, is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.\u00a0 What\u2019s the world\u2019s most common name?\u00a0 He consummated chapter six by selecting Mohammed over John and Mary.\u00a0 He actually saw, and wrote down, that the legendary voice of many cartoons, Mel Blanc, was allergic to carrots.\u00a0 That sealed chapter seven.\u00a0 In chapter eight he likewise discovered Donald Duck\u2019s middle name is Fauntleroy and in the ninth that every time you lick a stamp you consume one-tenth of a calorie.\u00a0 The final chapter culminated with a query about where Winston Churchill was born during a dance.\u00a0 Robert remembered: the future warlord debuted in a ladies room.<\/p>\n
The state exam had to be passed in order for the Department of Motor Vehicles to be notified and penalty points removed from Robert\u2019s driving record.\u00a0 The state proved manifestly more merciful than the private school, requiring only twenty-five questions with three choices each and a score of eighty percent.\u00a0 Robert registered ninety-six, and soon by mail received his official Certificate of Completion he as ordered mailed to a court in Fresno.<\/p>\n
Now he\u2019s monitoring speed on rural stretches of freeways and reminding himself that grumpiness affects judgment behind the wheel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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