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  • Judy Schulten

24. Take defensive driving in Spanish.

Updated: Nov 24, 2019

If you have to take a defensive driving class, take it in Spanish. You’re only doing it to work off a traffic fine or reduce your car insurance You don’t need the information. Might as well listen to the Spanish and learn some car vocabulary.




Meet Sr. Defensivo.

He was the instructor in my defensive driving class. Of all his students, I was a) the only woman, b) the only non-native Spanish speaker, and c) the only person over fifty. Sr. Defensivo seemed to resent my presence, but I didn’t know why. At the end of the day, when he presented my certificate, he asked, “Are you working for the State?” My shocked, “No!” must have told him he wasn’t being supervised. When I realized how unwelcome I had been in his class, I was proud I hadn’t left at the lunch break. And I had learned many new words for “la policía.”

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