My dad is a very good driver.

Unlike a lot of drivers, he actually uses his blinker.

The other day, when we were returning from the beach, he slowed down, put on his left-hand blinker and, after making sure the busy road was free of oncoming traffic, turned the wheel. It’s something he’s done a million times, but on this particular occasion the driver behind us decided that it would be a good idea to try to kill us by accelerating and passing us — on the left.

“Whoa!” my dad yelled, when this lunatic came to a screeching halt in the middle of the road after nearly smashing into our vehicle. Normally, my dad is a mellow guy, but the blatancy of this murder attempt angered him, and he leaned out the window and yelled, “I was blinking! I was blinking!”

The driver shouted some unintelligible nonsense back at us, then sped away. I have no idea what she said, but from her outraged tone I understood that she thought it was perfectly acceptable, this business of passing on the left. Despite the fact that she was on a two-lane road with a solid yellow stripe running down the center of it, and the driver in front of her had just indicated he was going to make a left-hand turn.

Good grief, I thought. Didn’t this woman ever take driver’s ed?

For the most part, I’ve ceased being amazed at the things people don’t know, but I couldn’t help but think that if she had taken the high school driver’s ed class I took, and driving lessons with a man I’ll call Mr. Chambliss, she wouldn’t be a manslaughter case waiting to happen. Because my high school had a pretty good driver’s ed course and Mr. Chambliss — well, if I’d ever attempted a dangerous illegal passing maneuver, I would have been unceremoniously brought to a halt with the emergency brake and forced to listen to a stream of derisive commentary and insults.

I hated my driving sessions with Mr. Chambliss. He seemed to hate them, too. He was mean and unpleasant, and the biggest obstacle standing in the way of my driver’s license. But in the adrenaline-charged moments after our almost-accident, I found myself looking back on Mr. Chambliss with fondness for the first time in my life. After all, the man did teach me to drive. And many of his lessons remain with me to this day.

For instance, I’ve never forgotten the two things I did wrong on my road test: I wasn’t driving fast enough when I got on the interstate (“You want to be going at least the minimum speed limit when you merge”) and I came to a stop in a crosswalk (“The crosswalk is for pedestrians”). My road test was probably the last time anybody could ever accuse me of driving too slow, and I’ll admit that I still sometimes come to a stop in crosswalks. But I feel bad about it, and for this I have Mr. Chambliss to thank.

Looking back, what I find most surprising is that this man I detested actually managed to have a positive impact on my life.

And he wasn’t the only one.

There was also my seventh grade shop teacher, Mr. Wright. Mr. Wright was something of a raconteur, and he loved to regale us with horrific stories about people who’d lost various body parts while operating heavy machinery. He was easy to mock, but I’ve never forgotten his demonstration of how to use a drill press.

“People don’t get hurt the first time they use this machine,” Mr. Wright told us. “The first time they use this machine, they’re careful, cautious, they do everything by the book. No, they get hurt the 100th time they use this machine. Because they’re overconfident, and they take short cuts, and the next thing you know, they’ve drilled the tip of their finger off.”

I remember Mr. Wright’s drill press story often. It comes back to me when I’m driving, or cooking, or doing anything else that carries some sort of risk. And I’ll remind myself not to become careless, that despite all the years of, say, driving now under my belt, I could still kill myself — or be killed — doing something as habitual as going home from work. Years later, Mr. Wright’s message — be careful — is still worth thinking about. Who would have thunk it?

I thought of another annoying mentor — the manager at the convenience store where I worked in high school — just this week, when I stopped at a convenience store. While I was waiting in line to pay, a woman was yelling at the manager. She’d just filled her tank with $40 worth of gas and some of it had sprayed on her foot. And yet when she requested a paper towel, the clerk had refused to give her one — he’d told her that she had to purchase the entire roll.

The manager was indifferent. “We don’t give out paper towels,” he said, and I wondered if he was actually a robot, sent from space to make life here on Earth even more aggravating than it already is.

This sort of sneering contempt for customers wouldn’t have been allowed at my old convenience store, where the manager taught us all sorts of stuff that used to make me roll my eyes but now seems to make a certain amount of sense. Her chief lesson was that if we treated our customers well, they would return.

This meant we had to let people use the bathroom, even if they didn’t buy stuff, and give them discounts if they complained that we didn’t put enough tomatoes in their salad. And if you ran out of gas and wanted to borrow a gas can, the manager gave you a lift back to your car.

I used to make fun of this manager, of course, and say things like, “The customer is not always right,” behind her back. But — and I can’t believe I’m saying this — she did teach me the value of treating people well and providing good service, and it’s a lesson I’ve always remembered.

It’s odd, the small bits of wisdom that came from people who drove me crazy and seemed to make life more irritating than it needed to be. Maybe these people weren’t as irritating as I thought.
Or maybe they were, but I still managed to learn something from them.

Foss Forward makes a weekly appearance in print, in The Gazette’s Saturday Lifestyles section.