Today while I was out with some coworkers during lunch we saw a couple cars with personalized license plates. The one ahead of us said STILCRZN. My original impression was “still crazy” before I looked at it again and figured that it meant “still cruisin’”. We then got to talking about some others we had seen and thought that they stood for something else. For example, one of us mentioned seeing a license plate that read SHTNSTR. He thought it meant “shit and stir” before he figured out that it meant “shooting star.” The other guy mentioned that his ex-wife had a plate that read SNGLBNY for her nickname “Snuggle Bunny.” They had to take the plate off of her car after a couple weeks because too many guys were hitting on her thinking it meant “Single Bunny” or something like that. Please share your funny or unusual license plate misinterpretation stories.
My pickup license plate says MESHUGA.
I live in a state with 14 Jews.
Mostly, people ask, “So which one is your Sugar? The truck or the dog?”
A guy I met on the Yahoo station wagon owners group has the plate MOVE ZIG. I bet those who haven’t been exposed to the “all your base” phenomenon are thoroughly confused.
-Andrew L
My liscense plate used to end in “ZZT”. It just came like that. About once a week someone would ask me about ZZ Top.
There was a great article in wired years ago that talked about the software used by the Motor Vehicle Departments to screen for profanities. They had some great examples of stuff that had gotten through, like 4NIC8R.
There was a piece in this month’s Harper’s about some vanity plates being interpreted by other drivers as obscene. I found it amusing. Some were probably actually meant as such, but others seemed to be innocent. It’s hard to tell, though.
My old License plate had the letters AHX in it and people would always ask if it meant Anthrax (the band, not the virus). I’d just tell them nope, just came like that.
Colin
And here they are:
BEARLVR
LEZ MIZ
KUNSTER
FCM BKY
GT BUCKD
BIDBAWLZ
COPUL 8
FL 8 ME
HODAWG
and a guy explaining his CNLNGS plate was perfectly innocent.
So which ones do you all think are obscene?
I want my license plate to say:
PA65000
