HOLLYWOOD—The morning that my life changed I sat poised for a marathon red light at the end of Gracie Allen, after traversing Cedars Sinai. It was worth the wait: George Burns opened up like the fairway of the 18th hole at Pebble Beach, broad and carless. For some time I had had a mind to take up racing. This seemed a splendid morning to put the dream into action. Especially since my daughter was late for school.

I floored the gas, leaving George Burns in the dust and zipping up San Vicente. An unnerving beep invaded my consciousness and there was a helmeted policeman framed in my rear window. Shock overcame me, as I pulled over. I was far less buoyant than my usual self with a snappy comeback, like, “Ah, the paparazzi on my tail again.”

“Did you know you were going 55 miles in a 35-mile speed limit?”

The punchline? I was given the opportunity to go to Comedy Traffic School and make amends. What is the connection between comedy and moving violations? Looking at the list of possible alma maters, the lions share offered yuks: Great Comedians Traffic School, the Low Cost and Fun/Laff School in Alhambra, in Beverly Hills was Pizza 4U and Comedy. My daughter said, “Before you started eating healthy, you would have gone to the pizza school.”

Closer to home and my dietary preferences was The Improv in West Hollywood. I entered the comedy club with dread and trepidation; I left with dread and trepidation of a newspaper deadline. What went between, to tell you the truth, made me happy I got to go.

We met in the club’s side-room, painted relentless black, a drab maroon curtain backstage and marooner carpeting. Here gathered the guilt tainted, quiet and sullen on a Saturday morning. Nobody breaking the ice. This charcoal-black chamber was imbued with the musk of booze-breathed clubbers and flopsweat. This did not bode well. I imagined the bald, undernourished instructor dryly announcing, “Please turn off your cell phones as we wouldn’t want them to distract from eight hours of tedium and boring rehash.”

Surprise. Soon as the man opened his mouth, we violators were in the hands of a kinetic comedian and a master teacher.  In no time, he was asking everyone the weirdest thing we’d ever done in a car and coaxing out of us what traffic sins we were here for. Speeding at stellar velocity, running lights in camera-equipped intersections, making a left turn eight minutes before it would have been ok to make a left. Some infractors were nailed for the “California Roll,” which I used to think was something you order at Sushi Mac.

“I ran over a red light,” said a young woman of Brazilian extraction. “I mean through a red light.”

Ohio-born comic, Mike Uryga got into teaching traffic school after studying at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in San Francisco. “I was doing open mikes and was very fourth wall. I was doing the lines of other people, Neil Simon and Woody Allen. My friends said to check out traffic school.”

After observing five eight-hour traffic school sessions and answering a 300-question test, he made a discovery:  “You have to be yourself.” He went back to the open mike and spoke his own lines now. Audiences immediately warmed.

Thanks to Mike we had eight hours of learning and laughter at The Improv. There is a Yiddish saying, “A lesson learned with laughter is a lesson remembered.” By that yardstick, my foray into study was a memorable one indeed.

My belly warmed by laughter, I got to break at Phred Segal—Oops! Fred Segal—nearby and watch the pretty young things pass by and the cars park. A quintessential L.A. spot, where people who want to throw money in a barrel and burn it, get to buy clothes. Watch the sleek quarter-million-dollar go by on wheels. What a fine place, and nobody paid me to say that. I swear. And to those who walk or drive by—you under the canopy by the bottle of Peregrino water and the Davy Crocket hat—you are one of the beautiful people.

It was a long way from George Burns Way and that sinful morning when I got busted. You should be so lucky to get caught speeding in Beverly Hills.