The Mystery of Rita’s Six Questions

Exactly how Rita got such power over me, I’m not sure. I only know that I lied and cheated in a grievous fashion, that Rita somehow caught me, and that I wound up at her mercy.

I never saw Rita, which made it odd. And odder yet, she was in Houston. Why did Rita-in-Houston care that I was committing small crimes out here in California? Huh, Rita, why did you care?

Well, she did. And I was forced to do what she wanted.

*

I’m getting ahead of my story, of course. The whole thing started sordidly enough in a small burg at the edge of our megalopolis.

I was driving through this burg on a weekend jaunt when a geriatric coot driving a Cadillac DeVille began to veer into my lane. I swerved and nicked the double yellow line.

The coot didn’t notice. They never do, you know. But the town cops did. They decided that my double-yellow-line-nicking justified a citation.

The cops and I had a frank and candid exchange. I reflected on geriatric coots who should be removed from the road and issued a golf cart. They reflected on my double-line crossing.

Anyway, you catch the drift. I ended up with a ticket and an invitation to traffic school.

The true horror was the traffic school. Has big government ever invented a more cynical program? You walk in, waste a day listening to bad jokes by a failed comedian, and that’s it.

How did comedians corner the traffic school industry, anyway? It’s as if some faceless bureaucrat at the DMV realized that traffic schools were baloney but, hey, the law was on the books so why not convert the concept to a jobs program for stand-ups?

Here, for example, is an honest-to-god name for a traffic school: “Pizza for You with Comedians, too.” Another school advertised a topless comedian. Just picture it.

It was this loathing, I think, that led to my downfall. One day someone mentioned that Blockbuster now rented teeny computers with videotapes that qualified as traffic school.

I perked up. This sounded good, very good. I trotted down to the Blockbuster store and rented one. $39.95 plus tax.

I remember thinking that the culture had arrived at the perfect conclusion to the traffic school madness. You pay off Blockbuster, cart home your tapes, don’t watch them, cart them back. The process was reduced to a pure exchange of money.

Only one obstacle. You plugged the teeny computer into a phone line and it asked you questions as you “watched” the tapes. To pass the course, you had to get 70% right.

No problem. I didn’t need the tapes. I already knew my U-turns, my double-hatch whites and the rock-back of a true stop. They couldn’t beat me.

And they didn’t. Each little quiz started with the question, “Did you watch the tape?” Yeesssssss, I would answer. Then it would ask questions like, “Is it safe to drive through a red light?” Noooooo, I would answer.

Every once in a while, the computer would produce another kind of question, like, “On tape 4, what was Dick Butkus doing?”

I didn’t know and didn’t care. My percentage was so high, I figured, I could afford a few misses. The quiz ended, and I toted the computer back to Blockbuster.

*

And my near ruin commenced. The Blockbuster clerk handed me a neat, printed note that said something about a “problem.” I was supposed to call the computer company. In Texas.

Where Rita waited. “It appears,” she said, “that you missed all the tape recognition questions.”

My god, I thought. They’d kept a separate tally.

“But,” she said, “you get a second chance. I will ask you six recognition questions now. Just to make sure you really watched.

Then she added sweetly: “One warning. If you miss more than two, you will not get your certificate.”

I was sunk, a goner. My insurance rates would explode. All because I had refused to watch a video.

She began. “Was it Hulk Hogan or Humungous who appeared in tape 2?”

I kid you not. A wrestler question.

“Humungous,” I answered.

“Incorrect,” Rita said.

And so it went. The second question I got right. The third wrong. Fourth right. Fifth wrong. Sixth right.

I could still count, and I had missed three. I waited for the ax to fall.

“Well,” said Rita. “Thanks very much. We just wanted to make sure. Your certificate will be sent.” And she hung up.

I sat there with the phone in my hand. Was Rita not so good with arithmetic? Or was the whole thing a shuck?

I will never know. The mystery resides with Rita and the traffic school gods. But I do appreciate the slack from Houston.

Meanwhile, back at California, I’m on the road again. . . .