For the past few weeks, I’ve been taking the course. It’s an online comedy school, and none of the jokes are funny. Quite honestly, I’m trying to get through it as quickly as possible, so I’m not even stopping to read the jokes.

The representative whom I talked to over the phone said I didn’t have to take it all at once. In other words, I could read a chapter here, a chapter there, and take a break between each day. For about a half hour at a time, I’ve been reading it before doing something else. So far, it has instructed me not to drive drunk, to watch out for pedestrians, to coast along wet streets and not slam the brakes, to watch out for my blind spots, to drive behind a reckless driver rather than in front of them: common sense stuff.

At the end of each chapter is a three-question quiz. Never have I taken an easier exam. I thought it would be harder. The hardest part is to read through each chapter because they’re brutally long and painfully dull.

Now I’m reading about street signs. In case I didn’t know, it said a STOP sign is red and octagonal and that a YIELD sign is white and triangular with a red border and the word YIELD in red in the middle. I can’t wait for that quiz.

At the end of the last chapter, one of the questions was:

Drunk driving is______.

a. illegal

b. fun

c. safe

d. all of the above

Most, if not all, of the questions are about as hard.

At the bottom of every quiz, it asks me to write the answer to one of my security questions, to prove I’m human I guess. To be honest, those are the most difficult of all. For whatever reason, I’m always forgetting the answers to them. Why do I have such a hard time remembering what my favorite rock band is? I guess because I have so many that I forgot which answer I’d given at the beginning of the course. Nor can I ever spell my mother’s maiden name correctly. And I don’t have a favorite pet name because I’ve never had a pet. I had to make one up which I couldn’t remember. Why do these organizations think every person has had a pet? Shouldn’t they consider weirdos like me?

But whatever. I have until late October to finish the course. If I don’t complete it by the deadline, my insurance will skyrocket.