Property of …
At first, the reading was difficult, embarrassingly so.
MRSMATT.
Mr. Smatt? M.R. Smatt?
Mrs. Matt. A license plate that shouldn’t have been challenging, in the way FORNK80N or NOTI GRL might be. After all, we normally read plates while driving (and perhaps thinking what an idiot the person ahead is for driving too slow and having Momof4 as plate or plate holder.)
Sometimes the messages are personal, not meant to be deciphered. Sometimes they just brag, often about profession or business.
MRSMATT was spied while stationary. On a large, sleek, black, expensive SUV far taller than I am. Figures. Anyone that drives such ostentation with a plate like that has to be concerned about property. And being the property of someone else.
It’s one of those things that irks me as a feminist. One of my best remembered journalistic lessons as an idiot of 19 was being told I couldn’t use the name of someone who called herself Mrs. Charles Womble. What’s her name? She doesn’t belong to her husband. I meekly replied that she wouldn’t give me her name, insisted that she was only Mrs. Charles.
The older, wide-awake feminist Mel B. would have been angry too. Would’ve insisted that I find her real name (and I think I was required to) or excised the quote from the story.
The older, wide-awake feminist also knows there is an older generation of women that identify with their husbands names. I know several older women who keep using their husband’s name long after his death, partly as security.
It doesn’t make it any better.
I suspect the wife of Matt is of a generation that should know better – considering it was a shiny SUV and not a shiny land yacht – but sadly doesn’t. Even if she’s still madly in love with this specimen of manhood, I don’t know why she needs to proclaim it on a license plate. I look forward to the day when Mr. Matt becomes an object of loathing to her and she prefers to change the plate to H8SMATT but still keeps the husband because he pays for her SUV and her large collection of capri pants.
I don’t know if it’s California, or if I only started noticing it in California, but there’s a lot of vanity here. The vanity license plates can have special characters. Heart, hand, star, plus sign. There’s the license plate holders, which are as varied as your imagination. If you’re lazy, you probably still have one from the car dealership.
But if love your car, tell the world. Tell the world what model it is (again.) Love your grandkids, your kitties? Hate Republicans? Love ‘em? Love your guns? Have something smart-assed to say and a bumper sticker just won’t do or isn’t enough? Any decent mall should have a license plate kiosk with a book full of sayings. If I followed you home, would you keep me? My daddy bought this car, but it’s all mine. If you are close enough to read this, kiss my ass.
I’m not immune. But neither did I choose something from a book. Mine says: Bigger Inside Than Out. TARDIS. Nerdy, absolutely. I have yet to have anyone know what the hell that means. Though I always wonder if sometimes people are honking because they like the frame and not because they want me to go on green. (Hmmmm. Maybe not.) My frame is also a little hard to read; it’s properly appreciated when stationary, I’m sure. And even then, nobody is going to appreciate it.
As the crowd in Life of Brian says in unison, yes, we are all individuals.
We like to think we’re unique, but chances are, we’re not.
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For some people, it’s too hard to actually cultivate your own identity. Much easier to latch onto another’s–especially a rich, socially acceptable another’s.
A lot of California seems to be all image. It doesn’t matter if you’re mortaged to the eyeballs if you’re rolling around in your Hummer. S.F., the part of the state that “shuns” image is all about it, as well. “You aren’t a progressive, vegetarian, tree-hugging, trail-walking, bicycling hippie? Get out of here with your bleached teeth and your strappy sandals. Don’t hit the vanity plate on my Prius on your way out.”
What’s wrong with Capris? I wear them all the time in warm weather.
People tell me Virginia has a preponderance of vanity license plates. I think it’s because in Virginia, you don’t have to pay extra to express yourself. Most of them are, as you say, either redundant (MYLEXUS) or obscure (GAYLESE).
One of the most interesting I have seen was on a High School boy’s car. It said LUVIN BJ. I don’t think anyone has to think too hard to guess the meaning of that one. Maybe the kid’s girl or boyfriend was named B.J. I don’t know.
I guess I’m lazy because my car still wears the license plate assigned me by the DMV when I bought the car. Lynn’s car has the combined initials of our two undergraduate institutions as the license number, however. WVU CUP. Most people who read it ask me if I played tennis in college, and I tell them, “Oh yes, that’s what the cup means.”
We bought vanity plates when we moved back to Michigan. I won’t go through the convoluted story of mine, but I will tell you about Stephen’s. He has a Michigan State University plate with the block S of the university, followed by the letters TEVEP. So together the plate reads STEVEP. Cute, huh?
I’m teaching a global civ course focused on individualism–its nature and its violence. And I just have to use that Monty Python example somehow before the end of the semester…I also wanted to ask you if you had seen The Life Aquatic. Bowie apparently was behind the entire soundtrack. Lots of Ziggy Stardust songs show up. The film is pretty solid, too….
I guess I shouldn’t be so quick to go off on vanity plates when it seems some of my friends go that way as well.
I did contemplate, back when I bought my first new car, getting a plate that said TARDIS. But ultimately, I’m too cheap to pay an extra fee for vanity.
I think what set me off wasn’t the vanity itself, but the proclamation of property.
MRMATT, your wife’s plate is clever. And Dawn P., Stephen’s is pretty clever too.
So what is yours, then? You might as well just tell me now.
And Todd, no, I haven’t seen The Life Aquatic. And you just said the magic word: Bowie. Will have to check it out.
I’m suprised that there are so many suggestive license plates out there, like LUVIN BJ. I read at the Smoking Gun that the DMV usually tries to discover those and force the person to change them.
There was another one I saw that said 8 INCHES, not long ago. I couldn’t decide if the guy was simply being hopeful in his thinking, or if he was being realistic. I mean, it’s a little more than the average length of six, but it’s not like he suggested it was twelve inches. Of course maybe I misinterpreted that license plate entirely.
OK Melissa, you asked for it - You know that one of our favorite places to go camp is Leelanau State Park, which includes Grand Traverse Lighthouse. I have a lighthouse preservation plate, from which funds go to save lighthouses in Michigan, with the letters GDTRV (GRand TRaVerse).
Yes, I did ask.
On a related note… I’m occasionally mildly tempted by California’s Yosemite plate. But I still think I’m cheap. We’ll see what I think when plate time rolls around. It’s just far easier and faster to keep renewing, though.