The License Plate Game

A couple of days ago a friend of mine was complaining about the fact, she and her husband got pulled over in Texas for not having a front license plate on their car.  Seems there is a lot of confusion in Texas about front plates.  Last year a bill was introduced to remove the requirement of the plate but it failed in the legislature. The big problem though, is a lot of media reported it as having passed.  The drivers of sport cars such as Porche, Corvette, and Viper were pretty much doing the happy dance.   Actually a lot of those people had never put front plates on anyway.   They had been just taking a chance on not getting caught or were willing to pay the fine so they didn't have to put a plate bracket on their car.

My friend didn't take the stop well.  She like others feel like it hurts the aesthetics of the car.  (they drive a Dodge Viper).  I am not entirely sure that the cop didn't just want a close up view of a newer Viper convertible and my friends weren't complying by speeding.  You just have to know that he was following them saying "you WILL do something wrong eventually".   When they didn't cooperate by breaking some law, he had to get creative.

  Ultimately, it is really hard for me to relate.

A. I drive a cheap "nothing special" car and I wouldn't be concerned that a front plate would diminish its appearance or worth.

B.  I live in Kansas.  They don't care if I don't have a front plate. I don't think they hardly care if I have a back plate.

While it had her all riled up, it turns out the consequence is a $12.00 fine and you have to bring your car in to some inspection station and show you have mounted a front plate. (which leads one to wonder, why it wasn't tagged for the offense during the yearly state inspection.  In TX every year you have to bring your cars in to an inspection station to pass all the mandated criteria such as working lights, horn, proper emissions etc.)

Anyway, now they have this horrible (according to her) plate on the front of their car and she is not happy.  To compound the problem she parks next to a fellow worker that has a Porche with no front plate.  Damn life is brutal for the performance car folks out there.

If she wanted to have some fun though why doesn't she join the hoards of creative people out there that think of clever things to put on their plates. 

Kansas has nearly started a war here with a recent change in the rules regarding personalizing plates.  Up until this year, every county kept track of the personalized plates within their own county.  So if your idea was unique to that county it was ok.  BUT NOW only one unique combo of letter and numbers (up to seven spaces) PER STATE.
Holy crap, NOW WE HAVE A SERIOUS PROBLEM!!!


In other words, our state has 105 counties which had 53 HUSKER plates, 43 JAYHAWK plates,38 GITRDUN, 37 CHIEFS, 36 2FAST4U, 35 SPOILED, 34 SOONER, 34 BLESSED, 33 MYTOY, and 32 REDNECK.


Already my questioning mind wants to know....

1. Why does Kansas have 53 HUSKER (Nebraska team!!!!) and only 43 JAYHAWK  (Kansas team !!!)
Kiddo #2 who is an alum of Univ. of Ne. will tell you because Nebraska  has a great fooball team, but he is willing to concede that Kansas has good basketball.
Simmer down, Kansans, he is looking at it from a Husker point of view.

2. Were there really 38 people in this state that wanted GITRDUN on their car.  It nearly makes me ashamed to live here.  And the 32 that wanted REDNECK are adding fuel to the flame. 

3.  What are the numbers for duplicates for K STATE and MIZZOU.  There would have to be a whole bunch of those too. Why were they not mentioned in the article.  Is the writer anti K-staters or anti-Tigers?

Now people are having to rethink all of those duplicates and try to come up with ONE "unique to the state" idea. 

Seemingly, I am having more fun with this than the person that had one of the Jayhawk plates in her family for 33 years.  The odds of her being the first  to request that plate is not likely.  She better get used to having
SCREWED on her plate.

Which lead to the whole issue of getting by the plate censor guys.  Yesterday, hubby happened to notice something he was reading about a guy with the last name  Annis.  Hubby was thinking that was an unfortunate last name but what is more important is there is NO way that guy can put that on a vanity plate.  Although you can never say never. I have seen a plate that said AZZ BOY.  Tell me how did that get by a censor?  Also, WTF is on a plate.  Do the plate police not text????

Kiddo #2 was telling me (back when he was in college) about some of the requests his moronic yet creative classmates tried to get past the plate censors.  FUQUE for example or the next logical derivative FUQUEU

As far as putting last names on plates, I hardily discourage that.  My one venture into the world of personalized plates was when in a moment of insanity. (I get those moments pretty regularly) I decided to put my last name on a Missouri plate.  We lived in St. Louis and hubby was in a job that put his name out there where most people knew it anyway.  We were already in  "you can run but you can't hide" mode  People knew the car with or without the plate on it.  Then we moved to Grand Island, NE. with our car with a unique Missouri plate that boldly advertised our last name. To totally appreciate that you have to know our last name is extremely rare.  There are only a few and those few are in central Illinois, not in NE.

   To get us firmly entrenched in the town's rumor mill, I proceeded to lose control of said car going over an overpass on an "icy snow packed road" kind of day. Spinning numerous times around and around then into a ditch right down from the entrance of hubby's place of employment.  Everyone coming in to work that morning had something to talk to hubby about.  GREAT conversation starter.

A couple of last comments for those that insist on being creative with posting some hidden message or slogan on the back end of their vehicle is that some of you might not sound as clever as you think you are.  Some guy has a web site with all the plates he has had.  He claims that nobody can readily figure it out which leads to a lot of people following him to his next stop to inquire.  I find this somewhat hard to believe unless he is only stopped by really stupid people or he has exaggerated the facts to make is story more interesting.

His plate is AMIYY4U.  As it would turn out he is NOT too wise for me.  I would not be following him anywhere.

BUT every once in a while there is a plate in front of me that I just can't figure it out. It is like an itch that can't be scratched. What does it mean??? I have never resorted to following the car and its owner somewhere to ask though. Even my inquisitive mind has limits to "need to know".

The Good for the day....anything can be fun if you have a sick twisted mind

The Bad for the Day...That people are having all these huge stressful issues with the overly important license plate.

The Weird for the day.... Sometimes the license plate police have dirty minds