So here I am, pretty angry with myself that I got a speeding ticket five months ago. Yes, of course I'm leading up to something.

To get a point off of my "driving record", I had to attend Traffic School on Saturday for eight glamorous hours. Needless to say, I wasn't too thrilled about it. I don't know anyone that is thrilled to go to traffic school, actually, and about half the adults I asked said they would rather be shot in the face than go again. My parents told me it was a good reason for not getting another ticket.

Looking around the room was the hardest part. I looked around and all I could see was a rainbow of ethnicity born in a rain shower in the early seventies. That wasn't supposed to be racist, it was just how it was. "Just the facts, man." I looked up and I saw this complicated system of pipes that seemed to lead to nowhere. The walls were bare with holes in it every two feet. It felt like I was in a goddamn warehouse.

First of all, I thought there would be at least a FEW kids my age taking the class, but apparently only people thirty and above get traffic tickets. So I sat down between this middle-aged Asian man wearing "ghetto" clothing, and an old scaly woman who kept informing the class that she drove a Jaguar, as if that would win our respect.

The teacher was both the best and the worst part of the day. His name was Jack mc Fadden. I thought it was funny that he kept telling everyone he was Irish, because apparently nobody can tell from the "mc" in his name. George mc Ha is my moniker, and you'd better realize I'm Irish before I tell you repeatedly in my goddamn traffic school. That's how bad it was. Anyway, it was getting quite chilly in the room, and I already had a cough to begin with so I was upset, and I asked old Jack if he could turn up the heater. He proceeded to tell me that "Tiara" used to be in charge of the temperature, but she always turned up the heater too much and it frustrated him. I asked him who "Tiara" was and he proceeded to call me "Looney Tunes". Boy, everything was "Looney Tunes" with this guy. You'd ask him how the weather was, and he'd say "What is with all these Looney tunes asking me these Looney tunes questions?" And yes, he'd even say Looney Tunes Questions even though it sounds horrible grammatically. Well anyway, after I got no real answer about who Tiara was, I immediately saw a tan Doberman walking around the room with a nametag that said "Tiara". That place was crazy. I felt like I was in a goddamn nuthouse.

However, despite getting Pneumonia and being annoyed with the Asian man asking me, "Yo, can I have a pen, bro?" every five minutes, I managed to survive by looking around the room and thinking what other people were thinking. This took a few tries to perfect, because at first I got this woman from a trailer who was missing several teeth and talked in some sort of slurred speech, and I seriously doubted she was thinking anything at all. I was surprised when she knew what white lines on the road were. I mean, no one else in the room did.

Take this red-haired girl in her mid-twenties for example. She was wearing a "studded belt" and a fashionable shirt. I could tell that she was thinking of getting her nails done or wondering what was going to happen in the next episode of "Friends". I wanted to walk right up to her and call her a big phony, and that nobody gave a fuck that she had red hair, she was still a big goddamn phony.

Then there was this man in his late thirties who kept raising his hand every three minutes, asking old Jack if he knew when certain laws were passed. Jack had no idea, so this man proceeded to tell him and the rest of the class that the Romans and the French and the English were behind all of our traffic laws. You could tell everyone in the room wanted to hurl a brick at this guy. He was that goddamn boring. I kind of laughed at this man sitting behind me who called him a "boring faggot". Not at what he called him, but because he yelled it out of nowhere. The woman with the jaguar turning around and giving him a lecture kind of ruined it though.

That's really all I want to talk about traffic school for now, except that during the breaks we got, I sat in my car and listened to music for five minutes because it kept me sane. I didn't want to have a cigarette for numerous reasons. I mean, there WAS a police station right next door. Well that, and I was sick of being hassled. Jack liked to walk Tiara around the parking lot during break. I kind of felt sorry for him because he seemed like one of those guys who break up with their girlfriends when they're twenty three and are never really over it. I started feeling really sorry for him when I pictured him eating a can of cold ravioli with Tiara licking herself in front of a fireplace during Christmas time.

I wanted to make this entry really emotional and soft, but I'm angry right now because I wrote this fabulous essay on Friday night to show up my entire English class, but now I have such a bad cold my mother won't let me go to school tomorrow. I'm going to ask Mr. Rice if I can read it anyway on Tuesday, or if he'll let me read it to him at least. I really worked hard on it.

On a side note, I'm the kind of guy that rolls down his windows in the rain to have a cigarette. It'd be so much better if I didn't include that cigarette part, sorry. I need a girlfriend. God, I wish I didn't say that.

cya.

-george