License Plate Fun
Friday, January 20, 2012 at 12:00AM ;)
When license plates went from two letters to three, Uncle Barney was ecstatic. More letters meant more word possibilities.By Al Vinikour
Driving either short or long distances can sometimes be boring. Furthermore, it gives one a plethora of things to bellyache about. For instance, being boxed in by heavy traffic, a blazing sun trying to laser you with rays, the brake lights on the vehicle ahead sending out message in Morse code, etc. Citing these excuses as grounds for a miserable time shows just how unimaginative and lazy people can be. There’s a simple solution to traffic tedium and its right in front of you: license plates.
There are more games that emanate from a license plate than come out of a Wii game. Let’s start with the basics: on long trips many people/families take note of the various states they see license plates from. At the conclusion of the trip, this sometimes results in a reward of some sort, like a candy bar, some loose coins or, in the case of abusive parents, one less beating. My wife and I often play this game. We once found a license plate from Guam, which must have resulted in a lot of engine flooding as the person drove over from the South Pacific. Just as an aside, I would doubt that anyone has ever achieved logging all 50 states during a lengthy trip, but it’s still fun to see how many one can amass on the freeway. (Hint to those who are looking for a clever way to cheat: drive up and down the rows of a parking lot at a national attraction like the National Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH, and you can pick up a ton of hard-to-find plates.)