There are many times when I find myself the subject of ridicule, however my favorite is when it is unbeknown to the speaker. The most common of these situations is when discussing Jewish people and those with vanity plates. Now, where I grew up one knew never to ridicule the Jews not only because most people were Jewish but also because we had all spent our 12-13 year old weekends doing the YMCA, Time Warp and getting henna tattoos, caricatures, and endless amounts of mini hotdogs in a bun at one another's bar and bat mitzvahs. This changed, however, when I went to school in the South. My mother cautioned me to "keep a low profile" about my religion and when I did begin to tell people it was often met with "oh...wow, I've never met a Jewish person before." I decided this was ok because that is how I had reacted when I met my first friend who believed any form of touching before marriage was a sin, my first African-American friend and my first friend who thought Bush was the savior of our nation. Still, I opted not to wear a yellow star on my shirt so often times when in groups someone would make a derogatory comment about someone Jewish I would just ignore it until someone else, feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed for their friend, alerted everyone that I, in fact, was the aforementioned "cheap Jew." The stereotypes about Jewish people were nothing new to me but I was really surprised to find people's distaste for vanity plates.
In my family, we always enjoy trying to figure out what personalized plates mean and both my parents have vanity plates. Thus, when I was 14, just about to get my permit at 15, and my parents bought me a car (such a spoiled jewish girl, I know) I wanted one too. I chose one that was very simple. H2O Sam with an actual "o" and not a zero, to be chemically correct. I swam, played water polo and life guarded so I thought it made sense. People often times speak badly about people with vanity plates and yet again someone in the group feels compelled to alert everyone that I have one. The backpedaling begins. Whatever, ask someone what their first AIM screen name was and H2O Sam seems far more appealing. I went in to go change it before I left for college and found myself incapable of letting go...h2o sam was part of my identity. I liken it to changing the name of your car, vagina, or penis for some arbitrary reason that didn't involve a new car, vagina lift or bad case of syphilis.
Now, a major drawback of this personalized plate is that it requires me to harness my terribly out of control road rage. If you were to be cut-off by an unassuming white car you probably wouldn't remember it. If you were to be flicked off by a nice silver escalade, not much would probably stick out about it other than some comment about people thinking they own the road. But if that same SUV's license plate was "HGHROLR" I'm guessing the next time "HGHROLR" wants to get over a lane or is parked next to you in front of a restaurant you are going to remember that car. I can't yell at people, I can't flick them off and I especially can't do these things within the close vicinity of my home. Of course, I could let the road rage run wild but I have no desire to get into a fight, have my car keyed or have someone tell my mother I'm a bad driver (which I'm obviously not...duh).
I really have no funny ending here...just my frustration that my expression of my aquatic self hinders me from expressing my sheer hatred toward bad drivers. And that you should watch those 'cheap Jew' comments because they probably own that silver escalade too.
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