I started writing this column three years ago this week.

For kicks and giggles, I thought I'd take a little drive down Memory Lane and make a pit stop at some of the more memorable moments that this experience has afforded me.

During the past three years I have been sent hundreds of provocative and wonderful questions, from Ruth Beam of Redlands' hysterical question about driving naked, to Ricky Francisco's morbidly amusing query about the legality of a hearse driving with a corpse in the car-pool lane.

In case you missed those weeks, the answer for both of those questions was, "definitely NOT legal."

I've sat next to a mounted shotgun in a highway patrol vehicle on the side of the freeway while an officer wrote a speeding ticket to a young man whose excuse for speeding was, "I thought that this was supposed to be the FAST lane!"

I've written about drive-through strip clubs in Pennsylvania, drive-through funeral homes in Tennessee and the unbelievably insane drive-through daiquiri shops in Louisiana.

I opened an ugly can of worms when I published correspondence from a former auto mechanic named Bill who described a murky world that few outsiders have ever been privy to, as he outlined the unscrupulous details of his experiences as a mechanic for unethical repair shops.

I've had the opportunity to weigh in on public policy when I read that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was undecided as to whether or not he was going to sign the hands-free phone bill. After sending him a copy of a very somber column that I had written that focused on some horrible deaths that were caused by people driving and talking on cell phones, the governor wrote me an e-mail and told me that he had decided to sign the bill, before his decision became public knowledge.

I've even managed to win a couple of awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for two of my columns; one on going to the DMV to have them officially take my eldest son's license away when he was a wild, know-it-all teen, and the other for the parental trepidation and flat-out denial I went through when my middle son received his license.

My youngest son is driving now and his oft-repeated mantra when I am observing him behind-the-wheel is, "PLEASE stop writing stuff down!"

My favorite memory comes from a column I wrote that was meant to be a tongue-in- cheek life lesson for my teenage sons so that they would be aware that life would probably throw them a curve or two before they might be able to consider buying their dream Bugatti, Corvette or McLaren.

It was obviously a mistake on my part to forget that the dream of driving a fantasy machine lies deep-seated in the souls of a great many human beings. Based on the responses I received from some readers, my comments were the literary equivalent of digging my fingernails into their hearts, ripping out their dreams and proceeding to do the Macarena on them.

Wes Lawson let me know how he felt about that column in no uncertain terms when he wrote: "Because I believe in fate, it is your son's destiny to be at least a multimillionaire if not billionaire and I hope he buys every car he has ever thought was cool, buys his brothers whatever car they want, buys his friends whatever car they want, and puts you in a two-bit nursing home."

Now how many jobs give you the opportunity to laugh at yourself like this?

Here's to the next three years.

Michelle Pearl is a longtime traffic-school instructor and the owner of InterActive Traffic School Online, www.trafficinteractive.com. Send questions to drivetime@dailybulletin.com or write to DriveTime, c/o the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, PO Box 4000, Ontario, CA 91761. Some reader questions will be answered in print.