The Driving School Spectator / Ghose Slow
Conlon, Edward
Ghose Slow by Edward Conlon T he Grand Concourse in the Bronx is broad and tree-lined, eight stately lanes bordered by art deco and art modern apartment houses. Modeled after Park Avenue, which...
...or the music which inspires them ("Dun...
...He sat up as if electrified, bobbing and weaving, eyes darting back and forth: "The quick re-flexes, man...
...That is an example of the superconscious mind...
...Number two, the cop...
...Only the West African was resolute: "Anxiety...
...A better example is in India, when a holy man goes into the jungle, and the noise of the monkeys and the sound of the birds is around him, but he hears nothing, his mind is with God...
...There was laughter from all but Natasha as he insisted that in the event of a sudden stop, some calculation was necessary...
...Ay Ay Ay Ay...
...Modeled after Park Avenue, which sought to re-create the boulevards of Paris, it was to be the Champs de la Bronx...
...and, so situated, it links concerns of this world and the next...
...When Mr...
...But the holy man does nothing...
...The current figure...
...There was a pause before a young Edward Conlon is a writer living in the Bronx...
...No one is the perfect driver," agreed Mr...
...Concepts such as "right of way" have a metaphysical tinge there, especially when illuminated by D.N...
...he exclaimed, somewhat heatedly...
...There are three kinds of mind: conscious, subconscious, superconscious...
...Remember this from today...
...Almost sadly, he added, "Again, it is not so important for driving...
...On a recent evening, Mr...
...An estimate of seventeen hundred was insufficiently exact, and he invited a dozen guesses (here, the Socratic method seemed less apt) before announcing the answer was 1,760...
...The Progressive Driving School shares a block on the Concourse with a Pentecostal church and the Ascot Theatre ("First Run Bronx Porno...
...black woman named Natasha said somewhat sternly, "Nobody is...
...The subconscious mind tells you what you cannot see—maybe something from childhood, from the past...
...Ghose stopped and shook his head before going on...
...It is, it is important...
...and "Please repeat that" throughout the class, and he made similar requests of his students, whose English stretched elastically from West Africa to San Juan...
...CI 60 The American Spectator February 1995...
...Who is the perfect driver...
...Number four, the Pope...
...Mr...
...Its daunting breadth, coupled with the haste of its motorists, has made it the most dangerous thoroughfare in the borough, with thirteen fatalities in one recent year...
...He rides through red light, too...
...As the interrogation continued, other personalities began to emerge...
...A bone-thin Rastafarian with his hair tied up in a red turban seemed sleepily uninterested in the class until he was asked how to escape collision in an intersection...
...And it is, in its way...
...He wrote on a markerboard: 30 x 1760 x 3 lx60x60 He then laboriously took the class through the equation to show that the car moved at forty-four feet per second...
...Ghose, with a smile and a fatalistic shrug...
...Ay Ay Ay...
...America is an extreme drinking nation, an extreme driving nation," concluded Mr...
...The Pope of the Catholic Church...
...A young, neatly dressed West African man did not look up as he responded, "Anxiety...
...When asked why people drink, the tentative responses included, "To socialize," "To forget your problems," and "Fun...
...His heavily Hindi-inflected speech provoked a rondo of "What...
...Behavior, attitude, emotion, all depend on the mind," he said...
...The conscious mind tells you what you see, a road sign, a traffic light...
...The man in the traffic court, he speeds, runs through red lights...
...A snake will do that...
...You must do this...
...His mind is on God...
...His method was Socratic, a feisty give-and-take bolstered by short homilies and vivid, onomatopoeic outbursts that might have illustrated a car crash, the high spirits of teenagers ("Hey...
...This is not what I want, this is not a lecture I want to give...
...You come here...
...he asked...
...Ghose sought to explain how much distance a car moving 30 mph needs to come to a halt, tempers in the class nearly flared...
...That is not even hundred-percent example...
...Maybe when you are dead...
...The superconscious is not important for driving...
...Strong emotion is prohibited for driving," said Mr...
...I don't think you get my point...
...Number three, the driving instructor, who knows the rules...
...How many yards are there in a mile...
...Summons for fifty and two hundred dollars...
...A drunk driver—even if he is a most excellent person, from high family, a scholar—is a bad character on the road...
...It is the quick re-flexes...
...You be watching...
...M r. Ghose had a gift for lively speech, and his students responded to his earnest, searching style, but he was a compelling teacher mostly because his statements often seemed less like instructions from Albany than emanations from some still higher plane...
...Hidden feelings, we all have it...
...If you are coming home, for example, but your mind is still doing your experiments in the laboratory...
...What is example of strong emotion...
...His focus is wholly on God, so hundred-percent that if he lies on his back, a snake will crawl across his belly and he will not know it...
...It is what is required by the Department of Motor Vehicles...
...If I have to stop in an emergency, I am not going to start doing math problems," said Natasha...
...Clearly, they had served him well before...
...he asked...
...Ghose—a dark-skinned, potbellied man in an ivory shirt and gold-rimmed glasses—taught the DMV-mandated, five-hour driver-education class to a half-dozen putative motorists...
Vol. 28 • February 1995 • No. 2
