On vanity plates (and associative thoughts therefrom)

I know my commute isn't as long as some people's, but the 25 minutes still gives me plenty of time to ponder things. Such as my fellow drivers' choice of license plates. And, in particular, one that read NO YNIN.

No Yihnin? pondered I. What does that mean? Someone still bitter over the John Lennon/Yoko Ono hookup? No, spelled improperly. And then the flash of realization: "No whining."* Ahh.

Present mystery solved, I moved on to the next one: Just what, then, does "No whining" mean? Who is the recipient of this directive? Is it the command of a harried mother to her children? A message to the populace at large that there is no sense in complaining about the state of, well, everything?

Or is it the superior "ha-ha, sucks to be you, chump" of a Corvette driver, as in, "No whining that I, and not you, you plebeian, have a Corvette**"? Feeling rather pessimistic,*** I decided upon the latter, had my moment of self-righteous indignation, and accelerated through the stop light when it turned green again.

Okay, I told myself after returning to a more philosophical state. So that could be construed as a somewhat offensive license plate. But it's really not bad. Someone could have chosen something like HL HTLR or GOSATAN, either of which would have irritated me far more than NO YNIN. Or is it even possible to get such license plates? I mean, there was that couple in New Zealand who wanted to name their baby 4Real, but couldn't because numerals aren't allowed as names or something-something, and the article said that other names such as Hitler and Satan had been rejected due to the offensiveness factor. So it seems logical that if you can't name your kid Hitler or Satan, you can't list them on your car.

I wasn't far from my gym at this point, so it was nearly time to wrap up my ponderings. So what, wondered I, would I get on a vanity plate if I were so inclined? Hmm. Umm... GO... GOWRTR? Uhh....

NO YNIN is actually pretty clever. Why couldn't I come up with something so creative? What's so wrong with me that I, a supposed writer, couldn't--

Ooh, there's my turn. Time to release some happy endorphins.




*Yes, I was rather slow that day, but I blame it on frying my brain at work devising decodable homework activities for children. Another day in the life.

**Red, to boot.

***I blame that, too, on the homework-writing. Last footnote, I promise.