There comes a time in all of our lives when, though we’ve struggled and fought bravely and honorably and to the utmost of our ability, we have to lay down our arms and accept a hard but inevitable truth: we just aren’t going to be able to get the personalized license plate we wanted, no matter how many adjustments we make to it by replacing letters with numbers, or how many alternate spellings we try.
Of course, not everyone is able to accept this truth, and those who are not able to will fool themselves into believing that the nonsensical string of numbers and letters affixed to their bumpers actually represents something meaningful that other drivers can actually understand.
And of course this assumes that having a particular word or name on your license plate, even if it is perfectly understandable, is actually going to signify anything meaningful to anyone besides you anyway. Then again, I suppose they’re called “vanity plates” for a reason.
When I’m stuck in traffic and I see a license plate that has letters and numbers arranged in a non-random enough pattern that there’s a clear intent to say something, I while away the time by attempting to decipher its meaning.
Ideally this shouldn’t take a lot of time, because otherwise what’s the point of having your license plate say something? It’s a vanity plate, not the Junior Jumble.
This morning found me stuck at a red light and mulling over the meaning of the plate on the car ahead of me. The “WLF” portion of it clearly indicated “Wolf,” but I was baffled by the number and letter combination preceding it: 10BR.
“What the hell is a ten B R wolf?”
Eventually I realized that it was supposed to indicate “Timber Wolf.” Maybe I’m a little slow – hey, it was early on a Monday morning, after all – but making the progression from “one zero B R wlf” to “ten BR wlf” to “tenber wolf” to “timber wolf” isn’t an especially straightforward task, and I have to say that if that’s what you’re forced to resort to, well, maybe you should pick something else for your license plate to say.
And why “Timber Wolf” anyway? Obviously it denotes something so important about you that you feel the need to put it out there for us to – eventually – see, but what that may be is just as unclear as the confused jumble of letters and numbers that announces your timber wolfishness.
Yes, I know; it probably has something to do with sports, but in my geekiness, I can’t help but wish that it indicated a fondness for Brin Londo.
(Sorry, the Legion has been on my mind a lot lately for some reason.)
On a totally unrelated note, the person behind these rejected Valentine’s Day cards clearly has a window that allows him to look into my life.
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