Thursday, October 9, 2008

8 Hours of Hell for a 10% Insurance Discount?

Last spring after my 55th birthday, my ever-helpful insurance agent sent me a flier about "Senior Citizen Driving Improvement" classes and how I could save 10% off my car insurance if I took them.

What a lovely idea! Unlike some other of this agent's ideas - such as, "Isn't it time to insure your Final Arrangements?? -- this one sounded OK.

So I signed us up for the class - 5-9 p.m. on two successive nights, at a local junior high school, in a science classroom with little plastic torture-chairs and a ready-made spitball on the table. Little did I know how very long 4 hours per evening can be.



The instructor was afflicted with several bad speaker-diseases including a random barking laugh and a mind-murdering habit of repetition. So our ears had approximately 7 hours of this:

"If your attention wanders, if your attention should wander or shift HA-HAH, if your attention wanders, if you become inattentive, HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!!!... until we all began to shoot glances at each other which grew more junior-high as the evenings wore on.

In between speeches we were forced to watch videos in which, for example, a UPS truck suddenly appears parked in the right-hand lane and we have to answer a quiz question about what to do:

A. Accelerate into the right hand lane
B. Slam on the brakes and swerve
C. Do something reasonable and not necessarily suicidal, even if you really hate your teacher right now.

At about 6:57 p.m. tonight, my husband offered to gouge out his own eyeballs with my yogurt spoon to create a diversion. If he had done so, we could have rinsed him off with this bit of classroom equipment:


The class overall left me with a strong desire to drive right at some (empty) UPS truck and go out to my Final Arrangements with some drama. I will have to calm myself in order to turn in my 10% discount certificate; that is the good outcome. The bad news is that we have to do a 'refresher' course every three years. that should hasten the date of the Final Arrangements quite some.

Contemplate this tableau of eager learners (click to enlarge for full effect:


"Mr. HAHA, may I have a hall-pass? I need to go kill something."

5 comments:

Zoe said...

Ah straight murder would be too kind. Torture him first.

Grey Horse Matters said...

Sounds delightful. But on the plus side you won't have to go back for another 3 years and you get the discount. I don't know how you did it, I have no patience for this kind of stuff.

Dressage Nomad said...

Wow, that class sounds painful! My husband never lets me threaten to stab my eyeballs with my pens when we're sitting in school, he frowns upon me even mentioning it!

Flying Lily said...

c2b: You are so right. He did not care what were thinking and he squelched discussion to tell stories of his own driving prowess HAHAHA :(

Greyhorse: 3 years sounds too close for comfort today, as I am fresh from the misery. But you are right: it's done for now.

JesterJ: Yes my DH was just being noble in offering this distraction. But it does testify to his misery, as you and your DH must be able to relate. There's a good way and a bad way to do these types of classes. The good way is not rocket science.

Mrs. Mom said...

Holy hannah.... Bless you two for not duct taping him up into a ball, and finding out what ELSE might be in that science classroom to "play" with. Wonder if he will have to sit through a lecture as bad as his own?

Oh- wait never mind... he sounds like the type who would miss the entire point and sit there thinking the whole time how much better his classes are.....

Gah...