Body
There was an interesting story in the Salina Journal recently about personalized license plates and the approval process each state has to go through before approving and creating them. Surely you have followed a vehicle, or sat behind a vehicle at a stoplight, and played the game of trying to decipher what the combination of letters and/or numbers stand for. Rarely did anyone know what my father’s plate meant: “XZDGOHT,” and I don’t know what kind of hoops he had to jump through to “prove” that it was not a “bad” combination of letters! Each state has their own rules and regulations for personalized plates. To have a personalized plate in Kansas, it cannot have more than seven letters, numbers and/or spaces for autos and trucks, and no more than five for motorcycles. The Kansas Department of Revenue runs each personalized tag request through a massive list of 28,562 objectionable combinations. The list grows each year as people come up with new ideas and combinations. I’m not going to waste my space or time listing some of the personalized plates that are banned; I’ll just let you use your imagination. I’m just glad to know there are strict rules that KDOR has set. In the case of my dad’s license plate, it is a “low German” slang expression for “I love you.” Seriously. It is pronounced “X-Z-D-GOAT.” As siblings, my brothers and I fought over ownership of my dad’s license plate; I lost out.