I have a neighbor who is Jewish, gay, and works as a translator. I have never met him. Never actually spoken to him. I have never even seen him. In fact, for all I know, he is a she. But I have seen his car which is a VW bug with a license plate that says "TRANSL 8" and sports a star of David with a rainbow pattern. Amazing, by just looking at his car I know not only his religion, his sexual preference, but his occupation too.
Similarly, I was driving down the road a couple months ago and found myself behind a truck with a state-issued handicapped license plate. The actual license plate had the wheelchair sign then the following message "Shot 5X". It definitely caught my attention. "Wow, the person driving the car in front of me was shot 5 times! What kind of person is shot 5 times and lives to tell about it? Surely, he must be a big, strong, tough guy." Of course, I had to speed up to pass him to see if he was (he was). All of this information about his background I learned by simply looking at his truck... kind of weird, right?
This is what is so interesting about Americans and our cars. For some reason, it is common to announce to the world details (sometimes very intimate ones) about ourselves. Why must perfect strangers know or care what our political philosophy is or whether we went to whatever university.
Granted, I tag my car too, as you may guess from the title of this post. Still, I think it is an interesting phenomenon. Do other people in other countries do the same thing? I wonder.
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