From time to time, I've wanted to get personalized license plates on my car for reasons I can’t clearly define. It may have started in high school when that sort of thing was a status symbol but as I didn’t even have my own car then, I don’t see where the personalized plate was even an option. At all. Sometimes I see a plate that is just so clever and seems to say so much about the person driving the car that I think yes, I want that. To make a meaningful statement and be clever and personal, all at the same time. Why? I don’t really know. Maybe because I write and I like an opportunity to get my work out, I don’t know. But then I see something like BUNNERZ and think, wow, that’s more personal than I want to know about and then I remember all the reasons why I don’t have a personalized license plate.
Now I wouldn’t say I’m a bad driver exactly. Not exactly. Aggressive maybe. Perhaps speedy. Definitely absentminded from time to time. I already drive a big red truck I have no business driving. Do I really want a personalized plate so people can even more readily identify me? At this point people who cross my path on a regular basis may just think it’s me (or in their mind, that crazy bitch in the big red truck) but if they’re like me, they aren’t likely to memorize some mundane plate like DFJ524 and will just be merely wary as opposed to downright hostile because they can’t be sure it’s me. I think a personalized plate might lead me into an unintentional and unknown relationship with people I don’t even know. I don’t want that.
I already have an unintentional and unknown (to her at least, I am well aware of it)relationship with someone else based on her personalized plate. If I saw the driver of this car walking down the street, I wouldn’t be able to identify her. The car is a non-descript silver 4-door number that I wouldn’t be able to differentiate from any other silver 4-door model. But I see ZIPPEE on a license plate and hostility sets in. If this was Germany and I was on the Autobahn, I would bump her good and ask her how zippee she feels now. ZIPPEE thinks it’s okay to park her car in the drop off zone at my daughter’s school while she walks her child to his classroom. Never mind that there are signs posted, numerous newsletters sent home and a long line of cars with people, like myself, just trying to drop their child off and get out of that claustrophobic mess, ZIPPEE thought herself special. For a year. So it wasn’t a one time thing and in all honesty, she wasn’t the only one, although she was by far the worst offender. She was also the only one with a personalized plate and now, two years later, I see her car and I still want to bump her. I don’t think I want to chance this kind of long lasting resentment towards me although I’d like to think I wouldn’t do the same stupid thing every day for a year either.
Another thing I think about is the safety factor because there have been times when I have been following someone with a personalized plate and I couldn’t figure it out. Instead of watching the road, I concentrate on the plate as if it’s some puzzle I need to figure out. I can’t be the only one who can’t let that kind of stuff go. A puzzle! Oh, goody. Not a good thing in traffic. I once tailgated a guy four blocks to figure out that his plate, 2TH DK, actually meant “tooth decay”. I was so delighted to figure it out that I almost rear-ended him at a red light. I love how clever his plate was but this is another thing I don’t want a part of. I don’t need strange people following me around and nearly rear-ending me to figure out what those letters and numbers mean. I have enough of my own traffic issues to go creating any more.
There’s also the chance that people may understand what the plate says but not get the joke or intended meaning. And if it’s an inside joke, what’s the point? Isn’t the point of sharing an inside joke to share it with people who get the joke? And if so, isn’t having a plate that’s an inside joke like going around telling people the punch line to said joke without letting them in on it and therefore just kind of pointless? Okay, so it’s me. I don’t like not knowing what the plate means, whether I can’t figure out what that particular sequence of numbers and letters means or whether I can figure it out but can’t understand what the point is. For example, a couple of years ago, I came across a late 80’s white Ford Escort with a plate that read ILLSHOU—I’ll show you. For the rest of the day, I thought, I’ll show you what? I’ll show that by the time I’m 35 I’ll be able to afford the payment on this car? I’ll show you that I can drive this car 300,000 miles? I’ll show you I can still pick up chicks in a white Ford Escort? Even if this plate were on a newer car the message would still be kind of feeble but you might be able to play it off tongue in cheek. But on this car, it was just kind of…pathetic and it made me feel sorry for the guy. Especially when I almost rear-ended him at the stop sign.
As cool as personalized plates can be, I think they would just make me too visible and I have issues with that. So I think, yeah, no plates for me.
I could go through all the reasons I chose to keep my name, but it’s not a choice I feel I have to defend. I didn’t think that not changing my name would irritate people or make their lives more difficult. I also didn’t think keeping my maiden name would somehow surreptitiously pass judgment on other people. But apparently, some people would have me believe that. What surprises me is how many people have such a strong reaction to it and also how many people refuse to acknowledge it. Mostly I don’t let it bother me but sometimes it just gets to the point that I think I’ll rant if I want to. It’s not healthy to keep that stuff in. All that unaired vitriol might morph itself into something deadly and we don’t want that. So to prevent that calamity let’s get on with the ranting, shall we?
Things People Have Said to Me
1. I called the clinic to add my husband to the billing. The woman on the phone was confused when I told her our names. She paused for a moment before saying, “Oh, you’re one of those.” And she wasn’t nice about it. It was like she thought I was trying to make her life more difficult by making her type two names. That’s 12 extra letters. Is that really too much to ask of someone? I was told the computer couldn’t handle the extra name although I’m not convinced it was the computer that had the issue.
2. At work a supervisor, upon hearing that I’d kept my maiden name said, “I guess you’re not anticipating this marriage lasting very long.” The marriage didn’t last but in the entire 4 years we were married my decision to keep my name never came up as an issue. Not once. And believe me everything else under the sun did including the way he held his fork so I’m quite certain my name had nothing to do with it.
3. I had one friend (and yes, this person is still my friend. He should consider himself lucky that I still call him that) try to convince me that I actually said that it was a stupid thing to do and I didn’t know why I did it. As if. Did he really think I made the decision so lightly and then regretted it? If I had regretted it, I could have changed it at any time. He finally stopped saying it after I got married the second time and still sported the name my parents gave me. I think he was just trying to do a Jedi Mind Trick on me and foist his views on me.
Then there are the sundry other things people say whenever they hear that my husband and I have different names. Often I hear why people have chosen to take their husband’s names as if by keeping my own I am somehow passing judgment on them (not so much) and I have heard that we can’t be a strong family unit because we don’t all have the same last name. My all time favorite is how will they know you’re married? Um, I’ll tell them? Is that really even an issue? But the fun doesn’t stop there.
Things People Have Written to Me
1. My daughter, who also shares my last name (also not a political decision but why am I telling you this? You don’t care, right?) and I were invited to a shower for a family member. We couldn’t attend so I sent a gift and signed the card with my name and my daughter’s names including our last name which is not my husband’s name. In fact his name, first or last, was nowhere on the card. I got a thank you card back addressed to Paula and daughter last name hyphen husband’s name. Okay. See, not only is my name not hyphenated but my daughter’s most certainly isn’t and why couldn’t this person have just written the name that was written on the card in the first place? Did she think I got it wrong?
2. There is the whole forced traditionalism of the wedding industry that drives me insane. Even if I had taken my husband’s name, I find it horribly offensive to address invitations to Mr. and Mrs. John Anderson. I mean really, in what other context does this ever apply and why is it still okay to do it on wedding invitations? I don’t know any woman who ever refers to herself this way. My grandmother didn’t call herself Mrs. John Anderson (mostly because that wasn’t my grandfather’s name.) and she was born in 1918 and was a very traditional woman so what does that tell you? I personally find the whole thing incredibly tacky. Anyway, as my name is not the same as my husband’s it’s not even correct etiquette to address an invitation as Mr. and Mrs. Man’s Name. But that’s of course what we get. All the time. Even from people who know my name. And mostly I think if you can’t even acknowledge my name, why should I come to your wedding? Why are you even inviting me?
3. My favorite is one I got just this week. It was a thank you card for a wedding gift addressed to Mr. Husband’s Name and family. My name was on the gift, they could have at least put my first name but not even. Not even a Mrs! Yes, they’ve just dispensed with the whole different name thing altogether and relegated me to the generic “family”. Oh, feel the love. I feel like I’ve been sent back to the children’s table at Thanksgiving.
True there are times that people simply don’t know that I’ve kept my name and I really don’t have a problem with that. It’s an honest mistake (albeit a presumptuous one) but once you’ve been informed it’s disrespectful to not call people by their actual name. Often what I hear from people is that it really doesn’t matter, it’s not important and no one means anything by it. Oh, really? So if I decide I would rather call someone Missy when she prefers Melissa, that’s okay? What if I decide to call someone Beth when her name is really Brittney because I think the name Brittney is pretentious? Isn’t that kind of rude? And presumptuous? And disrespectful? If it doesn’t matter, why bother calling anyone by their right name ever? Perhaps we should just call the whole thing off and agree to just call each other “Hey you”. That will be easy and there will be no confusion or disrespect because you can’t get it wrong. Who’s with me?
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