I once went to comedy traffic taught by a “comedian” where the main thing I learned is that there’s nothing funny about breaking the law. This time around I decided to go to a class taught by a non-performing civilian. To protect his anonymity, let’s call him Barney.

The first thing he did was go around the room and ask everyone what they did for a living and when they’d answer he’d try to get something free from them. For instance, when one guy answered “hotel cook,” Barney asked if he could get some food delivered to the traffic school and specified that he especially enjoyed lobster.

When he arrived at me I lied because I didn’t want him to show up at my shows.

I said, “I’m a writer.”
“Have you written anything we’ve heard of?”
“No.”
He said, “I just read “Fifty Shades of Grey but I only read the kinky parts. I have a safe word and it’s ‘Don’t stop.’”

He proceeded to go over traffic laws for the next eight hours and when I say “go over traffic laws” I mean imparting extremely personal tidbits about himself and asking for feedback from the room while intermittently mentioning lane changes in intersections.

During the course of the day we learned, among other things, that he was conned by a hooker who said she’d go get him the drugs he’d just bought but never returned and that he’d been arrested and maced seven times in the last few years for “trying to leave this realm and meet his maker.”

Pretty quickly I realized this was not traffic school at all, it was just a $387 one man show with traffic laws serving as the spine. Well played, Los Angeles.