There’s just something about John Thomas that makes people laugh.

Sure, he’s a driver’s education teacher faced with class after class of mostly hormone-seething, teenage would-be drivers. He’s been logging in 12-hour days at the Austin Driving School for 22 years now, teaching those classes and driving around with teenagers.

He stands there at the head of the room, armed with a copy of the Texas Drivers Handbook, the revised October 2008 edition, a middle-aged man with a quiet demeanor and glasses. Teenaged eyes should be fluttering closed. Foreheads should be smacking laminate desktops. But, instead, his students are laughing. They’re teenagers, but they are actually listening to him. Seriously.

“It’s the stories he tells,” said Tiffany Larkin, a local Regents School student. “He’s been doing this a long time. He knows a lot of stories.”

It’s true. Thomas does know a lot of stories. Most of them are funny. Some of them are horrific. All of them stick in your memory.

“Kids love stories,” Thomas said. “I’ve had kids come back 20 years later and ask about the stories.”

Thomas said he got into teaching driving lessons for economic reasons. He and his wife were teachers at a private school that closed in 1987. He started teaching for the Austin Driving School the next year at a South Lamar location near the Horseshoe Lounge.

“That’s just a wonderful location for a driving school,” he said, his eyebrows raised in sarcasm.

Thomas once had an unlicensed teenager show up behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler for class next to the Horseshoe Lounge. She said she had been driving it since her daddy showed her how, while she was sitting in his lap when she was three. Thomas can tell you the full story.

“When I started doing this, I had no idea that I would still be doing it 20 years later,” he said. “I tell people that my profession is teaching the deaf. For relaxation, I teach teenagers to drive.”

Thomas has taught entire families of siblings to drive. He is starting to get some of the kids of his former students walking through the door, ready for the driving instruction and the stories. He mixes some important lessons in with his tales. There is a giant chart tracking Austin traffic fatalities on a wall at the front of the classroom. It’s been 18 days since the last death, he said. And he keeps a bulletin board filled to the brim with local news stories and letters he gets about traffic crashes.

The students who go through Thomas’s Westlake driving school learn their material well. They make it through 32 hours of classroom instruction, seven hours of driving instruction and an additional seven hours of driving observation. They score well on tests, and they seem to do well entering I-35 and dodging traffic on Bee Cave Road.

“I’ve yet to see a kid in here get below an 80 on any test,” said Cheryl Hehl, a secretary at the Austin Driving School. She signs teenagers up for classes, checks them in for driving time and checks the validity of their learner’s permits.

“They really listen to Mr. Thomas. It’s the stories.”

Those stories and watching Thomas in action have spurred a new interest in Hehl. She wants to become a driving instructor too. Mr. Thomas rolls his eyes when she informs him of her new vocational objective.

“You’re crazy,” he said.

So what are some of Thomas’ favorite stories, the kind that lure the elusive teenage mind?

“Hmmmm . . .” he said, contemplatively. “Well, there’s the time we almost ran over Leslie. And the time the blind lady walked out into the middle of traffic. And the kid that made a drug deal out of the back window while we were driving down Guadalupe. But I think one of the funniest things that ever happened to me was when I let two girls talk me into taking them for a driving lesson on a Friday night.”

Thomas doesn’t usually drive on Saturday’s after 7 p.m. He’s got those traffic fatality statistics on his mind. But the girls said their boyfriends were busy with their families, and they really wanted the lesson. He caved. Popping them in the car, he directed the driver to head to Sixth Street – Party Central on a Saturday night. The girls were horrified.

“People will see me and think I have no life,” the driver said.

Thomas was unrelenting. The car headed west on Sixth Street and stopped at a light. All of a sudden, the teenage driver began swearing and gunned the gas pedal, aiming for a crowd of people standing outside Esther’s Follies.

“Everybody was trying to take cover behind one light post,” Thomas recalled. “People were diving through the air in every direction.”

Thomas managed to get control of the car and bring it to a stop just before it jumped the curb. It turned out the driver had caught sight of her boyfriend out with another girl. That girl later turned out to be a cousin his mother had ordered him to take to the Follies, a side note that failed to amuse the crowd.

Sometimes, the parents of some of Thomas’ students accuse him of making up stories like that. They’re just, well, they’re too good. Thomas just leaned back a bit and reflected on his experience driving and his wealth of exposure to teenage drama.

“Who would make up a story like that?” he asked.

BELOW: Student Spencer Smith, left, shows John Thomas state-issued proof that he is ready for his driving instruction.