Run a Red Light and End Up Laughing : Clowning Around While Doing Time in Traffic School

Not long ago, I got my first traffic citation in 18 years. I ran a red light. I didn’t argue the ticket--I’d only missed the police car by a couple of feet.

To keep my record clean, I opted to go to traffic school rather than court. That’s how I ended up one recent Sunday with 15 other violators in a small room over Gigi’s Dress Shop on the Santa Monica Mall for eight hours of driver’s ed.

The teacher was a comedian named Shelley Bonus. At my table were a television producer, a casting director, a screenwriter and a TV commercial director. Shelley joked that we should make a movie.

Sitcom, maybe?

Getting into the eight-hour class had not been funny. It took 23 calls to the Los Angeles Municipal Court’s “24-hour information” number and various garbled recordings before I got one with useful instructions. Enrollment forms eventually arrived, listing more than 500 branches of state-certified traffic schools in Los Angeles County. Some appealed to the penny pincher (Cheap Driving School), the coddled (Lunch ‘N Learn at Fine Restaurants), the easily distracted (Guaranteed Not Boring), the star-struck (California Film & Movie).

Five branches in my neighborhood promised comedians for instructors. I picked Lettuce Amuse U Traffic School.

A woman answered the phone and put me on hold. The line went dead.

I was not amused.

I called Comedians Plus, and signed up.

Shelley Bonus had opened in a performance art show, “Aleph 2,” that weekend at the Wallenboyd Theater--it plays through May 21--and told us, “I’m really tired.”

It was 9 a.m. Dressed in a baggy sweat suit, with ratted blond hair, Streisandish intensity and a dead-on Cher voice, she talked about her never-quite-made-it career.

“This is like a job for me, two, sometimes four, days a week,” she said.

She’s been a clown with Circus Vargas, appeared at the Improv and Comedy Store, played small clubs, gotten burned out by audiences “getting drunk and melting.” She won a Drama-Logue award this year for a one-woman show.

But: “I’m not a household word or I wouldn’t be doing this.”

She has a 19-year-old daughter and wanted a steady job. When she passed her traffic school certification test, after 48 hours of training, she celebrated with three cups of coffee at the Rose Cafe in Venice.

Then, she confessed, she ran a stop sign going home. And got eight more hours of traffic school.

The class laughed. She was warming up.

Talking about the danger of illegal U-turns: “You know, like you’re driving down Rodeo Drive and there’s a piece of jewelry you have to have. . . .”

On the law requiring you to leave a note if you hit a parked car: “The note should not say, ‘Ha, ha, I hit your car and split!’ ”

By the 10:45 a.m. break she’d memorized all our first names and had a running joke for just about everybody.

But it wasn’t all yuks. She told of a representative from Mothers Against Drunk Driving facing a group of teachers-in-training: “Forty comics in a room who haven’t made it--there’s nothing more vicious than a roomful of unmade comics.” They heckled the poor guy--until he ran graphic documentary footage of a cheerleader decapitated in a drunk driving accident.

She spoke somberly of her 15 1/2-year-old nephew, a “permanent vegetable” since a drinking driver struck him three years ago. And how it helped her overcome her own chemical addiction.

Along the way, there were handouts, quizzes, group discussions.

By 3 p.m., after five hours trying to entertain and educate, she was rambling a bit. She’d lost her concentration and timing, her edge. The audience was getting restless.

But at the break, the casting director asked if she had “tape.” The director told her seriously, “You should be doing commercials.”

“I don’t even have an agent!” she screeched, her energy returning.

With the end of class in sight, she was back on a roll. A student mentioned her spare tire.

“I have a spare tire myself,” Bonus said, patting her midsection, “but I wouldn’t admit it in public!”

Then, mimicking a Jewish Mother: “Put paper on the toilet seat, don’t put beans up your nose, use a condom--and buckle your seat belt!”

At 4:45 p.m., we had our traffic school certificates, and Shelley Bonus had a couple more show-biz connections.

“Don’t come back to traffic school,” she yelled, as we filed out. “Come see my show!”