The
Government Told Me
I Was A Bad Girl
by
Karen De Coster
 First
of all, here in the Great Lake state of Michigan, we have that infamous,
socialistic, and bureaucratized bureau of governmental decree called
the Secretary of State. These are the morons who control and tax
our freedom-mobiles (or gas-guzzling, environmentally irresponsible
pieces of destruction, as Ford Chairman William Clay Ford likes
to call ‘em. Now that’s a guy who knows how to sell his products!)
Now there really ain’t no Secretary, for the Secretary is really
the head politician who emblazes his (in this case "her")
name in fancy neon above some rickety old door, where inside, the
lines are long, the carpets are ragged, and the old ladies who work
there hang their glasses on cheap chains, and look at you like they
wanna kill you.
Second
of all, that lady who calls herself "The Secretary" is
the big, bad boss of buffoonery who says who is going to get a license,
and who isn’t. Well, good old me, I’ve been driving for twenty-two
years without any incident other than a couple of tickets here and
there, until the calendar year 1999. That’s when I got an "official"
letter from that Secretary lady. It said something like, "Miss
De Coster, we would like to inform you that you have received the
following tickets (it correctly listed four) and that you are in
danger of losing your driving privileges."
Well
wait a second. I have never hit anybody. I just had a bad year on
the road, police-wise. They were everywhere this year. I just drove
a little too fast three times (5 mph over), and made an "illegal"
turn another time. So, they caught me. Oops. And they gave me eight
points.
So
that’s fine, I’ll watch my driving from now on, I say. That is,
until my insurance company called and said they were going to send
me a $4000+ annual bill to insure my 7-year-old big, bad, mean,
and environmentally destructive 8-cylinder pick-up truck, because
I was such a "high-risk" driver.
High
risk! Yes, high risk, the government said, because I got too many
tickets in too short a time. That’s being a bad girl, they say.
So that Secretary lady tattletale reported me to the insurance company.
Since I don’t make nearly enough to budget another $400/month, off
I go to a lawyer to find a way to get those nasties off of my driving
record, so I can once again be considered a "safe driver."
Well,
me and my lawyer went to court to remove those tickets one by one,
and wouldn’t ya know, they were willing to remove a couple of tickets,
but first, I had to agree to a distasteful little deal. I had to
go to Driver Safety School. Here, I was assured, they would teach
me proper respect for those pothole-filled, government roads and
for my fellow drivers. Then I had to pass a little probationary
period, where I had to be free and clear of any and all no-no’s
on the road.
So
I showed up for the first of my (2) four-hour long Motor Vehicle
Driver Indoctrination sessions. Mr. Instructor Guy waltzed into
the little cubicle of a schoolroom, and told us the agenda for our
8 hours of sheer boredom: we were going to talk about common courtesy,
road hazards, rules of the road, accidents, drunk driving, road
rage, and personal responsibility. (All I ever wanted to know about
life but was afraid to ask!)
I
sat, and looking around, noticed that at almost 40 years of age,
I was double the age of just about everyone in that room. I more
than kinda had a feeling I didn’t belong there, but had to bite
the bullet and play along.
First,
these kids in attendance were all just that – kids. Dumb kids,
too. They sounded like not one of them had any education beyond
the 5th grade. (But all of them probably had mothers
who had those ridiculous feelgood bumper stickers that said "My
kid is an honor student at such-and-such High School…)
It’s
a good thing I brought along a book to read – Finest News Reporting
from TheOnion.com, a silly book with silly stories like, "Congress
Passes Americans With No Abilities Act", and "Clinton
Deploys Vowels To Bosnia." It was a whole lot more interesting
than hearing all the indoctrination that all the dumb kids were
listening to. Only I spied Mr. Instructor Guy peering over at me,
and if I could have read his mind, it would have been saying, "Would
you mind putting your alternative reading material down?" Of
course I minded. The only reading material they gave us was some
stupid booklet on safe driving; great wastebasket-liner material.
But I closed the TheOnion book in the face of a hard stare,
and chose to observe the "group therapy session" that
was happening around me.
So
I had to pay attention, now. That’s when I noticed how really strange
these other 7 or 8 people were. The IQ of the entire room put together
was lower than mine, and being I was only 6 days post-shoulder surgery
(major reconstructive surgery), it was an extremely low-IQ day for
me to begin with.
My
lawyer, who looks and talks just like Jack Nicholson – and wished
he had all the ladies that Jack has – promised me it wouldn’t be
this bad when he cut me this fatuous deal. He told me to be nice
to the judge, hold my tongue, and say "yes sir" when asked
a question by the judge. I obliged. Then when they sent me packin’
to group therapy for idiot drivers, he said, "No big deal.
It’s just one little class." Right. We’ll see, Mr. Nicholson
wanna-be.
So
I observed. I started to make up names, in my head, for all of them
nutcases in the room. There was an incredibly argumentative little
gal next to me: Hard-assed Chick. Now Hard-assed Chick had something
to say about everything that Mr. Instructor Guy said. (She had been
getting on my nerves because I had been trying to read my Onion
book!) She never shut up, and she played devil’s advocate for every
topic that ever surfaced throughout the group therapy session. I
wanted to punch her at times, but I couldn’t because of my bum shoulder.
Then
there was Jaguar & Da ‘Fone Kid. He was 19, had a Jag (he said
he got rid of his Porsche because it was too prone to being pulled
over by the cops!), and he talked on his cell phone all throughout
group therapy until he got yelled at by Mr. Instructor Guy for being
so rude in the presence of "paying customers" (yes, we
had to scarf up $70 for these two great nights of intellectual interplay.)
Then
we had Bad-Mouth Suzi. She, according to her, never did anything
wrong. It’s just that cops were out to get her. But Suzi had such
a Bad Mouth, that any police officer pulling this looney-tunes over,
would certainly ticket her. She bad-mouthed Mr. Instructor Guy,
and then argued with Hard-assed Chick over the legitimacy of seat
belt laws and air bags, that is until Jaguar & Da ‘Fone’s cell
phone rang, and disrupted everybody. Of course, said Mr. Instructor
Guy, seat belt laws and mandatory air bags were the only moral way,
and that we were all too stupid to make those personal safety decisions
on our own, so we needed Papa Government to make those decisions
for us. But what he didn’t tell us was that Papa Government was
paying his big fat fee to teach the class that none of us needed
anyway.
Well,
them stupid little booklets they passed out turned out to be study
materials for a brain-dead "driver’s safety" test we all
had to take – except me. Since I was wrapped from shoulder to
belly-button in 8-inch thick, plastic body armor immobilizing my
aforementioned surgically-impaired shoulder, I said, "Hey,
I can’t write", and Mr. Instructor Guy so kindly exempted me
from such brain-deadedness as answering questions like, "When
do you use your turn signal?"
I
was starting to like Mr. Instructor Guy just a little, even though
he was a paid state bureaucrat, taking otherwise viable taxpayer
dollars to teach kindergarten-level common sense to a bunch of 20-something
bad drivers who couldn’t care less about MADD, or seat belts , or
how to drive safely in the rain, or anything else. At least he told
some good jokes, and he had some sympathy for an old gal high on
Darvocet painkillers and wearing a plastic Russell Crowe "Gladiator
" outfit.
In
the middle of one of our sessions, we were solicited by Indoctrination
Interruptus-The D.C. Kid. He came in selling cans of Coke for one
dollar so he could afford that most indoctrinating of school trips – the trip to the Potomac Wasteland – to bow down before the shrine
of Lincoln, and partake in the tales of glory about a tyrannical
government that makes us kill our little people with mandated airbags,
and won’t let us buy toilets that can flush what they’re meant to
flush.
As
Indoctrination Interruptus-The D.C. Kid told the group of his festive
plans for the big trip in his PC way, he described how he had aspirations
for a career in the "urban and regional planning field",
so this would be his big chance to see how government works. Ahhh,
the glories of public education!!! As he remarked about the wonderful
learning experience that would be acquired therein, little did he
know those cans of Coke he was selling were made by the most Un-PC
of companies – that evil, discriminatory beverage giant down in
Atlanta that Jesse Jackson would like to take to the cleaners for
allegedly not liking black people too much.
All
said and done, I received my "graduation certificate"
that says I am now a safe and informed driver. And I only had to
endure eight incredibly boring and useless hours of government-produced
pontification in order to be elected to this Reformed Driver Hall-of-Fame.
As
we went up to the front of the room to acquire these valuable pieces
of paper that meant at least one less ticket on the driving record,
Hard-ass Chick made another remark about these classes being a "a
bigger waste of time and money than the government mandated airbags
in her car." Hey, I think I am starting to like that gal just
a little! At the end of eight hours of mindless, bureaucratic spewing
of utter nonsense and Basic Group Therapy 101, I started to think
that maybe she’s a Libertarian, and doesn’t even know it.
May
31, 2000
Karen
De Coster is a politically incorrect CPA, and an MA student
in economics at Walsh College in Michigan.
Copyright
© 2000 Karen De Coster
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