About a month ago I received a suspicious envelop from my dear friend Jesse White who, apparently, is still the Secretary of All Things Vehicles. Has this guy been running uncontested for all these years or is he just that good at what he does? Well, we don't have time to delve deeper into that right now. What I want to discuss is the option to request "vanity" or "personalized" plates.
Vanity plates are the ones that often don't have any numbers and have little restriction. From what I can tell, you can put anything you'd like on your vanity plate with the only exception being offensive language. Personalized plates are the poor man's vanity plates. You can request something personalized but you still have to follow the rules, which include a set number of characters (minimum and maximum), at least one number but no more than three and these numbers must anchor the right side of the plate (no integrating numbers & letters and no numbers on the left side of the plate).
For some reason, I have been wanting to get personalized plates ever since I heard that they don't cost any more than renewing your plain old 341 8745 plates. When given the option between random numbers and letters that you can pick out it seemed like a clear choice to me. I had a few ideas right off the bat. One was IRNVAN 1, which is in reference to a shirt that my friend created for me when I competed in an Ironman distance triathlon. Personal, unique – I thought it fit the bill. I had always thought of incorporating 311 because it seemed like if I was going to be required to use numbers I might as well use it as an opportunity to reference one of my favorite bands. 311 takes up a lot of space though, which can be one of the true limiting factors in personalized plate design.
I thought I should give this some thought before putting in the request, so I came up with a list of other options. Some referenced a tie to my job (ADMIT 1, ACCEPT 1, etc.), others referenced Illinois Wesleyan (IWU 1850, IWU TY 10), and others were just random (TKERESY (take 'er easy – Big Lebowski quote), VMVMV 7 (crazy initials), FULL ON 5 (New Zealand saying), etc.).
I solicited help from people I know very well (i.e. family) and was surprised at the feedback. Most everyone seemed confused as to why I had any desire to request personalized plates: "I didn't think of you as the vanity-plate-type-of-guy" my sister admitted. It seemed to be what everyone was thinking. It the same type of reaction I'd expect to receive if I told them I was starting to hang out with the cast of Jersey Shore. It was as though everyone really thought of people with vanity/personalized plates as vain. I had always just thought of them as fun. It reminded me of when I dyed my hair blue in college and people asked me if I was okay. "Is something wrong? Why'd you dye your hair?" as if blue hair is the symbol of troubled youth. Maybe it is, but all I was thinking was, wouldn't it be cool to have blue hair?
I have such a wonderfully loving and encouraging family that they didn't stomp on my idea completely. They just warned me that I would be drawing attention to myself, whether I wanted it or not – just like the blue hair. I decided to table the thought for a bit and give it some thought. While driving around town, I would pay attention to personalized plates. Some of them I liked, some of them caused me to judge the person on the spot, while others I was indifferent to because I couldn't figure them out. What I realized was that I can't control people's reaction to my personalized plates. Some people might like them, some people might think I'm a total loser or think I'm vain. The risk/reward started to seem more and more tipped in the favor of risk. So, for now, I'm still good old 633 2458.
No comments:
Post a Comment