Plate Envy

It's not often that a license plate makes me jealous.  But just yesterday I saw one that I wish I had on my car.

SH8KSPR, it said.  And there were some other decals on the back of that car that made me think I wouldn't mind knowing the owner.  We seem to have some things in common.

Our family never had "vanity plates" on our cars.  Partly it was money (we were never exactly rolling in it); partly it was, I think, a humility that our parents tried to instill in us, with varying degrees of failure.  Even the word vanity applied to a license plate was too much for my parents.

I've seen a lot of amusing ones over the years, not a single one of which I can remember at the moment.  So I'm going to cheat.  Google ... here I come!

[PAUSE FOR GOOGLE SEARCH]

I'm back.  The search terms "funny license plates" gave me more than 5 million hits.  With lots of images, too.  Now I'm going to go look at some of the sites.

[PAUSE FOR GOOGLE LOOKING]

How about some of these?

• COUGUR (Tennessee, I think, but I dare not comment on this one.)
• GANDALF (Florida.  The plate is white, so this must be a post-Balrog plate.)
• 5INFUL (Can't tell the state.  Clever, though, using a 5 for an S.  I might want to know this person, too.)
• STOLN (Florida.  This might invite more attention from the police than I'd want.)
• WUUTEVR (I heard this too many times when I was teaching--wouldn't want it on my car.)
• MMMBACON (Ontario.  Who says Canadians aren't like us?)
• VLAD THE (California--carefully positioned above the word IMPALA on the car.)
• UR NEXT (A little ominous.)
• IPWNYOU (Alabama: What kind of drip would have this one?)
• FLASHME (Maryland: So hopeful, our species.)

There are all kinds of sites for this--there are photo blogs.  Contests (you can vote on the plate you like best).  Displays of all sorts.  You could spend a lot of hours looking at the sites.  Not I.  Instead, I'm going to think of some plates I would like to have.

[PAUSE FOR THINKING]

Okay, here are a few that would communicate what I feel most of the time ...

• LEAVEMEALONE
• WATCHROADNOTPLATE
• IDONTCARE
• IMNOTGOINGTOGOANYFASTERJUSTBECAUSEYOURETAILGATING
• IPOFTEN
• YOURMUSICISTOOLOUD
• YESIMUSINGCRUISECONTROL
• INMYMIRRORYOULOOKUGLY

I could go on, but I'm bored now.

[PAUSE TO RELIEVE BOREDOM]

[PS: This post kept my spell-checker very busy.]