I had to chuckle at church yesterday, at a memory that was prompted by something during the announcements.  A couple of the men in our church are doing a car-maintenance workshop.  Other church members can attend, but the idea is to provide it as a service for the community.  Well, when this was being announced yesterday, I was suddenly reminded of the “car maintenance” class I took in high school.

When I was in high school, as a homeschooler, we had a weekly “CLASS Day.”  CLASS stands for Cooperative Learning and Specialized Studies, and it was basically just a co-op.  Our main motivation for this particular co-op was “socialization,” so we didn’t have a lot of strongly academic classes; rather, we had elective-type courses where we could be learning something interesting, but enjoying each other’s company at the same time.  Most of these classes were really fun.  We even did a video production class.  It was a blast, and I learned a lot. But for one session, one of the dads did a car maintenance class.  I’m not sure why.

The class went something like this:  “If you need an oil change, you can do it yourself, but it’s easier just to take it to Wal-Mart.”  “If you get a flat tire, you can change it yourself, but I just call triple-A.”  “If this breaks, call triple-A.”  “If that happens, call triple-A.”  I’m not really sure why this particular dad chose to “teach” an auto-maintenance class, but we didn’t really learn any maintenance!  It was more like an ad for roadside assistance.  It was funny, though, and my sister and I still laugh about it, more than ten years later!