Growing up in California, the license plates all start with a number and have seven characters of letters and numbers mixed together at random combonations. The personalized plates read cute and catchy phrases using up to 7 characters and can start with a letter instead of a number. So if you see a California plate with a letter as the 1st character, try to read what it says because some of the personal plates are a chalange. Back when I first got my drivers license, I was standing in a very long line with my mom. We had enough time on our hands to look through this giant binder listing EVERY personalized plate in California! This way you could see if your phrase was already used and needed to alternate it a bit to get on your own car. This is when I first realised the plates had 7 characters and my name also had 7 letters, of course the light bulb goes off and we both flip over to the M section. MARTIEL was already taken! Some one is driving around a car IN CALIFORNIA with my name on thier personalized, license plate!? Is this another person named Martiel? AND this person is somewhere in California??? 1 in a million odds! Oh well.
Years later when I was an Interior Designer in LA I bought a personalized license plate. It read, "(heart shape) DEC8TN" Can you figure it out?
It translates to Love Decorating! and the heart shape is one of the characters to choose in personalizing your plates in California.
Later on we moved to Ohio, and the plates all started with a letter and had 7 characters. This was so confusing for me to adjust to, when I was use to the letter plates in CA being the personilzed plates...and here in Ohio I would sit in traffic trying to read a plate only to figure out it was a random selection plate and not a catchy phrase. Silly. Some of the plates were personalized and some were not.
THEN I move to Missouri, where I currently live. The plates here are back to starting with a number, and then a mixture of numbers and letters. AND the plates in Missouri are only 6 characters long and not 7 as in California. My name would not be on a Missouri plate...
Today I went to the DMV, to renew my plates and add on the little sticker for the next year. ONLY this year Missouri is changing plate backgrounds, from the teal and white stripe, to a white, with blue outline of the states shape on it and a little bird on the bottom. This means I had to get new plates to replace the "old design" plates, that I have on my car. AND!!! these plates start with a letter now instead of the number (still with 6 characters)! Now it will start to get confusing to read plates on cars durring traffic time. I will have a harder time knowing which are random, and which are personalized. Just as I did in Ohio, with reading plates, I could not tell sometimes if a plate was personalized and just didn't make sence to me or if it was a random plate on a car. ARRG!
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