My Obsession with License Plates
Or, How Weird I Really Am
When I say that I am obsessed with license plates, I don’t mean it in a figurative or hyperbolic way. I mean that I am literally (literally) obsessed with them. When I am driving, I am looking at every license plate I can. And I spend a decent amount of time considering the ones I see, thinking about the order of the letters and numbers and so on.
A little bit of background information that will undoubtedly bore you to death but may also help you understand things in the unlikely event you read past the previous paragraph: In the state of California, regular car license plates are arranged Number, Letter, Letter, Letter, Number, Number, Number.
As far as I know, plates are assigned by the DMV in numerical/alphabetical order, too. (I only “know” this because a friend of mine moved here and registered two cars, and those cars had the same license plate number, except the last number was off by one. 6TRJ244 and 6TRJ245, for example.) My understanding is that the state goes through all the last numbers (001–999) and then all the letters (AAA-ZZZ, I believe) before increasing the first number. Right now, for instance, you see license plates that start with 3–7, but none that start with 8. The 8s are coming soon, though, I’m sure. (Also, for some reason, I don’t see plates that start with 1 or 2. Which bothers me a lot.) Well, that was way more information than you wanted, I know. But anyway. Back to my obsession.
It started with this random thought I had some number of years ago: I began wondering if it would be possible to create a vanity plate that was indistinguishable from a regular plate. As in, a vanity plate that followed the structure of a regular plate but that could be read, understood, and mistaken for a vanity plate. A plate that followed the Number, Letter, Letter, Letter, Number, Number, Number sequence but also made sense in some way (a word or sentence or phrase, etc). Once I had that thought, I starting paying attention to license plates, trying to find ones that met that standard. To be honest, I thought I was going to see lots of them, but they are turning out to be harder to find than I expected. As in, I haven’t seen one yet.
I’ve even had trouble coming up with possibilities in my head. (I’m sure other people could rattle ideas off by the dozens — and I would genuinely love to hear them—but I’ve struggled with this.)
1MAN007
1MAN007 was my favorite for a while…but a plate that starts with 1 must be a vanity plate (since regular car plates only start 3–7). So that doesn’t really qualify. Also I haven’t seen that plate.
But then today, I thought of a legit, viable candidate:
4NHT451
I haven’t seen this plate, yet, either, to be fair, but I’m sure it exists. Is it a vanity plate, or a number assigned by the DMV? The world may never know.
(Unless it’s your license plate, and then could you please let me know.)
