The e-mail from Linn-Benton Community College held an offer I couldn’t pass up: For $150 and in eight hours on a Saturday, I could earn the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s certification to be a forklift driver.

I signed up. A new money-making tool — for so little? Outstanding!

My adventurous mood was MIA at 6:45 a.m. on the appointed Saturday. Fortunately our instructor, a soft-spoken Louisiana native, was not a chirpy morning person. He clearly laid out the challenge: Listen and learn the videos and his instructions. Pass the written test. Pass a forklift driving test. Take home a handsome buff-colored OSHA certificate, with your name calligraphied on it.

Main things to remember: A forklift is 8,500 pounds of metal, chains, hydraulics and long, pointy tines. Its human driver? Mostly water. Main goal: lift heavy stuff in and out of trucks and warehouses, on and off shelves — all without squishing someone or being squished. Don’t knock anything over and always look where you’re going, even if it means driving backwards.

I’ve never seen such an attentive class. For them, the stakes were higher than for me. I have a job. One woman hadn’t worked in a long time. She wanted a job at a warehouse. Two of the men already had jobs, but they needed their OSHA certificates. One young man was just looking for a start in life. His grandfather had paid the tuition. If he failed the course, he had to pay the tuition back.

Everyone passed the written test, and we assembled in the empty parking lot. We had to use the forklift to pick a few pallets from a stack, then weave the loaded forklift through a line of orange cones, into a cone “box,” turn, back out, weave through the cones backward and restack the pallets.

“I’ve only had to fail but one person,” our instructor said.

Gulp.

I passed the test the second time through the course. I’m pretty sure no responsible warehouse operator would hire me without more experience, however. (I sure wouldn’t.)

But I’ve never seen faces happier than those of my classmates after they passed. I hope they find jobs soon. I’ve found a fresh appreciation for LBCC. For 40 years, it’s been a place where people can reliably make a new start — whenever they need one. That’s uplifting, all right.

When she’s not driving a fork lift, Theresa Novak is the city editor at the Corvallis Gazette-Times.