you can definately get high the fisrt time you smoke. i know a lot of people who do. I personnaly didint, maybe because i didnt smoke enough or didnt do it properly or the THC didnt get absorbed, but it took me about 3 times to get high. there is no way i would have been able to drive. whenever i am high now i can drive perfectly fine. if you are really high, you for sure can lose balance and whatnot as well. so for the douche that said you couldnt do any of that: you, my friend, are very wrong.
what you should have done: eyedrops (if you had any), should have had him take a quick shower to get it out of his hair and such so he couldve just said he was around people who were smoking if it was on his clothes, sprayed a little axe or cologne, told him to just chill out and try to turn his high off (i dont know if that is posible the first time, but i can turn mine off or way down almost any time i want now)
sounds like he made it alright though if he jsut got in trouble for being late so nice job.