| |
|
As many of us know, in order for a minor to be eligible for the driver's
permit test, one must participate in an official class. These are available to
take online, and anymore most everyone opts to do it that way. In fact, Mr.
Lee's driving school, located at 19th and Taraval, is one of the very last left
in San Francisco. I chose to learn the necessary in an actual classroom; it
seemed unlikely I would ever have enough motivation to read a whole online
course by myself, and I preferred to get it all done in a four day summer class.
Mr. Lee is an eccentric little Chinese man with enough crazy stories to fill
the entire driver's manual. Part of it was to humor us teenage students, but he
really seemed to believe that people who eat sour cream are mean.
We watched a lot of videos demonstrating driving laws or showing footage of
highway accidents. The latter of these was so thoroughly disgusting, but I guess
it made the point of warning us about what can result from bad driving. We were
spared watching two out of the four infamous Red Asphalt videos made by the
California Highway Patrol. But for the two that he was missing, Mr. Lee
flamboyantly described them in detail, as well as the effects they had on former
classes watching them. But hey, I got to finally hear the eyeliner story for
myself; I had heard it secondhand from my sister a few years back and taken the
liberty to spread it around as best I could (eyeliner story: girl sitting in
passenger seat next to her mom is putting on eyeliner using the fold-down
mirror; mom is forced to stop suddenly, impact forces eyeliner against the
mirror into girl's eye, mom freaks out, pulls eyeliner, pulls out girl's eye
with it).
I don't mean to put the class and its teacher in too bad of a light, though.
We learned pretty much everything there is to learn about driving without
actually getting behind the wheel. We read and reread the official California
handbook, talked through many examples of virtually anything involving driving
gone wrong and how to handle such circumstances. I think I learned a lot more
than what I could've gotten out of a self-taught online course, and at the end
of the course I did actually passed the DMV permit test.
I would recommend Mr. Lee's classes for anyone under 18 who wants to get
their license, as an entertaining (really, it's not all gross stuff), yet
educational, course on the state-required curriculum.
|
|
