Pedestrian Safety

It was spring quarter of 1976. I was really tired of school and almost done but I had a few more hours I had to get under my belt to graduate. I had a couple of courses that I had to take and I had the privilege to choose an elective for the other.

A couple of buddies and I found just the course. It was called Traffic Safety. This was before the Jan Kemp affair at the UGA and therefore during the days when they passed Georgia Bulldog athletes whether they could read or write or not.

And they had classes designed just for them.

When we discovered that the three of us would be the only students in the class that were not on the football team we knew we were in the right class.

I remember the first test we took. Questions like…if you are driving down the road and you have a flat tire you should. 1) Slam on brakes 2) Honk the horn profusely or 3) pull slowly off the road. All three of us aced that first test and we knew we had it made.

After the first test the teacher assigned a partner for each student. Each pair had to choose a topic and teach the class for the assigned 50 minutes over the quarter.

Since we were the only students in the class that were not football players he let the three of us be partners. We didn't spend alot of time choosing our topic.

Pedestrian Safety.

We had a predetermined date assigned to us to teach the class for 50 minutes and had to write a paper on that topic.

There was a caveat. He expected all students to actually attend the class and we even had to sign in for each class. And there would be a final test over all the material covered by the student teachers for that class.

In other words we had to listen to the football players give lectures everyday about traffic safety.

We tried attending and taking notes but it was the most boring thing we had ever sat through in our entire college experience. Since it was spring quarter and such beautiful weather we took turns signing in for each other. In other words, we would pull up in front of the Education building and one of us would go in (wearing golf cleats) and sign the three names on the sheet and then all three of us would take off for the golf course.

We figured the final test couldn’t be that hard.

On one of those beautiful Friday afternoons, my friend Tim went in to sign our names on the attendance roll as Bennett and I sat in the car.

In just a few minutes he came running out with a funny look on his face and explained to us that they had changed the schedule and we were expected to teach that day.

Like right now. We knew the teaching assignment was weighted very heavy for our grade for the quarter. And we certainly wanted to graduate.

The three of us calmly walked in the classroom totally unprepared to teach for 50 minutes on Pedestrian Safety. None of us had done one bit of research or for that matter had even thought about the subject.

We walked in and the first thing that struck me was that all the students were in their places in their desk ready to take notes on that day’s lecture.

What happened that day still causes me to laugh.

Out loud.

(to be continued)