License to Shill

Like many children from the Northeast, my parents took us to Walt Disney World for vacation. At the beginning of the trip, everyone was full of fun and laughter - even if we left at three in the morning. The promise of sunny skies, sweet smells and giant, white-gloved rodents was enough to turn an adolescent's stomach into cotton candy. Being awake at that time of night (or day, depending on your collective unconscious) is surreal. Gas station lights look like oases, the navy firmament of the sky fissures and feathers and the road is fairly traffic-free. It leaves you wondering, as you pass the man in the brown Cordoba, with its rich Corinthian leather, "what in the hell is this guy doing on the road at this hour?" Is he going to work super early to sink his teeth into the ass of the American Dream or is he returning home from an all-night bender and practicing his excuses to the wife who fell asleep on the couch waiting for his untrustworthy backside to try to sneak past her - shoes in hand? I knew one thing for certain, though. He wasn't headed to Walt Disney World, like us.

When morning finally blessed us with its sun-drenched glory and we were full of coffee, donuts and pixie stix, we would inevitably start into the traveling games, like I Spy, the Alphabet Game and License Plate Poker. Don't even pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. You probably played License Plate Poker on your way home from work today. Eventually, boredom and ennui settle in like a rude uncle and the ride turns into a waiting game of "Are we there yet?" as Dad puts the steering wheel into a death grip and grits his teeth until they crack. That's when it hits...

"Did you see that? That car is from North Dakota!"

All heads slam to the same side window, temporarily listing the car onto two wheels. Even Dad gives a quick glance. The car starts buzzing with new life and someone (usually me) suggests we start keeping track of all the different license plates we see. We'd see all the plates from Delaware to Florida, but there were the other more common ones we would see regularly, like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, D.C., New York and even Quebec, which seems to collectively vacation at the Jersey Shore. Once, we saw an Alaska license plate and the resulting roar about made Dad drive into a ditch. To this day, I still have a bit of a license plate fetish.

In Delaware, if you have a low-number license plate number, you wear it like a badge of honor. Some people convert these plates to black and white ceramic replicas as a status symbol. They are all the rage, and I'm not making up this next part: people pay tens of thousands of dollars for the right to have a low-number license plate. Did you hear me? TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS! Conspicuous consumption is alive and well in The First State.

Ah, there's the other shoe falling. Delaware is The First State, and proudly announces that proclamation on the back of every car registered here. New Jersey touts itself as The Garden State, though many might proclaim it the "Which Exit?" state. Pennsylvania is the Keystone State and used to offer "You've Got a Friend in Pennsylvania." I hope I get a choice of whom to choose. If you have enough people sign up, you can have your group or alma mater on your plate. I suppose it's only a matter of time when we see people's personal MySpace page links, cell phone numbers and whether they sleep in the nude listed. I know one thing, there will be a lot of tailgating and rear-end collisions in the future if that last scenario comes to fruition. I'll end up in the Tailgating Hall of Fame and my car paint will be on the back of every Jetta in the state.

"But what about vanity plates?" you may ask. I'm getting to that. Calm down already. Usually, when you see a vanity plate, you would roll your eyes and yell out the window as you drove past, "Have a nice day, Miss Self-Absorbed!" before being passed on the right by a guy who looks like that wind-swept dude in the Maxell advertisement who is sunk deep into his chair listening to his stereo and steadying his wine glass. As he zips by, you can see he has something cheeky like "STOLEN" on his plate. Grudgingly, you mutter to yourself, "ok, that one was good." Then you would rattle off in your mind different letter/number combinations if you were to get one for yourself. A word of warning first. Many people put their occupations on their plates. These people should be locked away, but, if you insist on following suit, make sure you're not a therapist because "THRAPST" can very easily be misinterpreted as "The Rapist" and then you're in a world of hurt if your car breaks down in the wrong neighborhood.

We live in a world of efficiency. Some of those efficiencies come at a cost. Vowels are now an endangered species as some knuckleheads (teens are excluded because, frankly, they don't know any better) go for the cnsnnt nly spelling in ALL phases of their desperately-trying-to-be-hip lives. I once saw a plate that said IH8TRSTS. It was a California plate, so they had eight characters. It took me a while to figure out it meant "I hate tourists." I think we're all guilty of this. How many times have you seen one of these license plate mash-ups and spent the better part of your commute trying to figure out what the hell it meant?

I guess these days a license plate isn't just some rectangular wafer of cheap metal letting Mr. PO-liceman know you spent the better part of a miserable morning in line at the DMV to prove your car is legally registered. Nowadays, it's a way to tell the world you support the local wildlife, you're the proud member of a fraternity that's now on double-secret probation and you know how to spell like a teenager. Enjoy them now because we're probably not far away from them being flat screen images with advertisements from Stub Hub, ESPN scoreboards and toothy infomercials from Tony Robbins. It'll be the birth of a whole new game.

And the death of License Plate Poker.


Thanks to my friends Kim Martucci and Andi Buckman for this topic!