Short for Driver's Education, a class many
high school sophomores and
juniors take before obtaining their
Driver's License, hoping to gain skill and experience. For me, it's the worst hour and a half of my day. I will elaborate more here.
It's 1:55 -- 4th block, last class of the day. I'm tired from AP US History, English, and math. I want to go home. I want to watch anime and node. I want to turn up the stereo volume and blast Pavement and Orange 9mm throughout the neighborhood. I want to do anything but listen to an obese 45-year-old man tell me what direction my wheels should be pointing in if I am parallel-parked on a hill.
A big part of Driver's Ed is the videos. It's unwritten law that you must watch about 70 hours worth of crappy Ford videos made in 1986 featuring Cindy, Janet, and their boyfriends going to the dollar movie. They usually teach you nothing about driving. Though these are the entertaining ones. The boring ones are too repetitive. They basically keep telling you about the Smith System and SIPDE, searching the road ahead 20 seconds, doing this locating-a-bridge-and-counting-to-see-how-long-it-takes-to-get-there thing.
There are videos that are inbetween these, such as Paths of Thunder, about railroad safety. A horrible skit about a little girl who needed to get to her school play. "You can scalp your brother when we get home, Pocahontas! Now go get in the wagon!" (she points to a Jeep, what the hell!). They are stuck in traffic and are parked on the railroad as a train is approaching; the railroad gates go down and they are trapped. The little boy screams to his mother that a train is coming, but the mother doesn't care. A train conductor is shown sticking his head out of the train window and screaming, "My God! There are kids in that car!" from at least 300 feet away from the car. A close-in shot is shown of the mother screaming as the train hits the car and it explodes in flames.
Skits about drunk college students named Paco, Bill, and Judy who are going to pick 2 girls up for an orgy (I made up the part about the orgy for kicks). They are stuck waiting for a train. Paco announces, "Hold onto your seats you'se guys, 'cuz I'm gonna put the pedal to the metal baby 'cuz I'm the Pacomeister!" The train passes and they end up hitting another train that was parallel to the first train.
And the projects are nothing to write home about either. Sit at a busy intersection for an hour and see who stops and who doesn't. Determine whether or not they are wearing their seat belt. Now imagine this. You're coming up to a busy intersection, and you look to your right. There is a 15-year-old kid sitting on the side of the road watching you and trying to look in your car. They can't see very well, so they come up, tap on the window and ask you if you're wearing a safety belt. You look at them in horror and push your foot on the gas pedal to get the hell away from this kid.
And you only get to drive for a day or two. FUN.