At a red light today, I found myself behind a car with this license plate:
Like most vanity license plates, I found the intended meaning completely obtuse. Does the driver have a “meth liver”? Did she perhaps find a “mythical lever”?? Does she manufacture “moth louvers”?? What the hell does that plate mean!?!
About the only thing I could rule out for sure was this: it most definitely wasn’t “math lover”. No one on Earth loves math.
Generally, I just don’t get the impulse to project your personality through your car. Not only do I find it really odd, I actually think it fails in execution for most. Face it, there aren’t enough stickers, spoilers, and seat covers in the world to turn your drab-colored, mass-produced, four-door sedan into an individualistic public expression of pure self.
But if you want to try and create the four-wheeled equivalent of Pee Wee Herman’s bicycle, go for it. Just don’t expect me to be impressed. If what makes you interesting is your custom-made, backlit Monster Energy tow hitch cover, you’ve got bigger things to work on in life than vehicle customization.
But I find vanity plates particularly egregious. Let’s remember: license plates are a compulsory regulatory instrument, for which many of us feel the annual fees are already too costly. But the vainest among us can be duped into paying a totally unnecessary premium by the DMV. My home state has figured out it can charge an extra $50 just to issue the plate and a $25 surcharge for renewal every year thereafter. Couple that with a specialty plate honoring your favorite big-league team or breed of dog, and you can waste even more money!
(Total sidebar: I’m told we’re currently in a “troubled economy”. But on every highway, there’s a plentiful array of bumper-to-bumper discretionary spending on full display. So maybe we’re not dealing with an economic crisis, so much as a rampant problem of prioritization. But I digress.)
Imagine if similar options were available on other forms of government identification. Would you pay an extra $50 for a custom background color on your driver’s license photo? Or shell out an extra $100 for a Spongebob-branded birth certificate? Or an extra $500 to bedazzle your passport book with sequins and rhinestones, Liberace-style?
I sure wouldn’t, but then again, I am an admittedly cheap bastard. To me, vanity plates are a blatant waste of hard-earned cash. But if you’re a bit looser with your purse strings, you might be perfectly willing to make such an admittedly extravagant purchase. If so, here’s what you get for your investment: an unintelligible mishmash of illegible lettering. Despite your best efforts, your bid for highway humor is almost always foiled by the indecipherable string of contracted consonants at your disposal.
For the life of your plate, you’ll be condemned to interpret your intended wit, usually at exactly the moment you least want to. Stretch your imagination a bit and imagine the times you’ll most likely need to share your witty, custom alphanumerics. They include such enjoyable interactions as:
The uninterested DMV agent slowly processing your application,
The humorless cop who pulls you over for speeding though a school zone,
The overly inquisitive hotel front desk clerk keeping you from desperately needed sleep, or
The misty-eyed aunt following you in a caravan to the cemetery to bury your grandmother.
At best, your attempt to be cute or snarky is totally inconvenient. At worst, its horribly inappropriate.
So it should be evident to anyone with a meth liver, a mythical lever, or a moth louver—and especially to any godforsaken math lover—that vanity plates are a huge…
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Voiceover music by Coma-Media from Pixabay
This was a fun rant.