Stories from driver’s training

Stories from drivers training

Natalie Wilcox, Anna Krupka, Reporter

 

“‘Wow, that’s a new record,’ said my driver’s training instructor. He was referring to the third stop sign I had run through downtown Holland.” Nearly every person has a hilarious or crazy memory from their days in driver’s training. Here are some funny stories that students and staff shared!

Jr. Grace Pedersen

“One time while I was doing u-turns my driving instructor opened the window and yelled ‘I’m doing this to scare you so you hear the cars and get over it.’ So that was very funny and exciting.”

 

Instructor David Drenk

“I had the unfortunate issue of having to take driver’s ed with a broken leg.  My left leg had been snapped in half at the shin in a freak disc golf accident (just kidding) – it broke while at a basketball camp.  Anyway – I had to do all my drives with a cast that went from my hip to my toe.  I was lucky that we drove HUGE vehicles. We had a Caprice Classic station wagon that we could move the seat back far enough to allow me to sit comfortably without the ability to bend my knee.”

 

Jr. Savannah Reed

“I think the funniest thing that happened in driver’s training was that my instructor, Mr. Poole, informed me that he used to be my dad’s high school golf coach!!” 

 

Assistant Principal Audra Bolhuis

“The instructor of my 100 student driving class happened to also be the teacher who I drove with each time I had to practice.  He LOVED to use any mistake you did while you were driving as a lesson the next day during the lecture.  The second time we went out driving, I kept forgetting to turn my blinker on.  The next day in class, he calls me out in front of the 99 other people in the class and asks, “What did I keep forgetting to do yesterday!?!?’  And I could have died.  I was so embarrassed.  I now use my blinkers ALL THE TIME.  So, I guess what he did worked.”

 

Sr. Alyssa Karner

“One time when I was in driver’s training I was driving and the instructor took the wheel and turned the steering wheelreally aggressively out of nowhere. I was so scared and shocked I didn’t know what to do so I just screamed and sat there. There were obviously no cars around so apparently it was a test to see what I would do. I was supposed to grab the steering wheel back so I guess I failed that test.”

 

Jr. Elyse Schurman

“I took it with my best friend. She is terrified of trucks. It was our last drive downtown and she was driving. There was a truck behind and our driving instructor knew she didn’t like trucks so he told her she could pull over to let him pass. She did and the truck pulled in behind her. Our driving instructor told her the driver wanted to talk to her and she freaked out. The driver was just delivering product to the store that we had parked at. We were all laughing so much.” 

 

Instructor Ryan Burke

 “The girl of my dreams (or what I thought was the girl of my dreams) happened to sit down in front of me the first day of my driver’s training class. She called me “Bryan” the entire time we had the class together and I did not care whatsoever. At the end of our time in the classes, I asked her out. This was pre-cell phone, when you actually had to talk to people. She told me no. It was soul-crushing.”

 

Jr. Anna VanderWege

“I had an instructor for one of my drives that was eating ranch sunflower seeds; he chewed them with his mouth open and it stunk up the whole car, it smelled so bad. Then, in the middle of our drive, he ran out so we had to go find a gas station so he could buy more. He went into the gas station and came back out with another huge bag of ranch sunflower seeds and continued to eat them with his mouth open for the entire drive.”

 

Instructor Jenna Plewes

“I have a twin brother so I had to do driver’s training with him. We would have to ride together and he would always give me a hard time when I was driving from the back seat. We shared a car throughout high school and both worked at Dairy Queen. I could never drive the first car we owned because it was a stick shift. Thankfully we got a new car to share shortly after.”

 

Security Guard Mark DeVries

“My mom hit a parked car in her driver’s test and asked the instructor, ‘Does this mean that I don’t pass?’”

 

Jr. Ben Riley

“In my first range practice ever, the parking lot was covered in ice, and it was the part of the course where we just had to weave around a bunch of cones. I was the first one to go, and at the end of the course, there was a nice-sized snowbank. The last cone was set way too close to the snowbank, and so when I went to turn around, the front wheels started to climb up the snow and the car was pretty close to flipping. There was also no way to get down, because the back wheels were up a good foot off the ground. I started to panic and the windshield wipers and hazard lights somehow turned on. By then everyone was honking and the drive instructor told me to get out of the car. He assessed the damage, and the plastic on the front of the bumper was cracked. I thought I would never drive again. Don’t tell my parents, they still don’t know 😉