Complex Numbers

Kids These Days

Welcome to June. My inner optimist says it'll be different than May; my inner pessimist fears that he's right.

Let's start this month with an entry for "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+]. There's still time to join in the fun there if you want.

CHOP Kids First

My state, Virginia, is often cited as having the largest percentage of vanity license plates in the US.

Honestly, I don't care one way or the other. Some of them can be amusing. Others have indecipherable meanings. But real creativity can come in when one combines vanity plates with special commemorative plates. And Virginia has a lot of them, too.

For example, my optometrist, who went to UVA, got UVA tags. These consist of a giant orange V logo on the left side, which gave her the opportunity to add ISION as her personalized tag, so when read in full, it says VISION. Cute. On brand. Glad to have someone that creative taking care of my eyeballs. On the other end, I hope whoever got AGINA   on one of those is a gynecologist.

Other commemorative plates are more controversial. Every time I see the one based on the Gadsden flag   (99% of the time, these are on oversized pickup trucks), I assume the driver is a raging asshole and give him (99% of the time it's a "him") a wide berth and a short "thank you" for advertising his assholery. That's what I like about freedom of speech; it lets me know who it would be a waste of time and energy to listen to. "Dont Tread On Me" is translated, by me at least, as "Tread on THEM," where "them" is any sort of minority.

Another problem one is the "Choose life" logo. Okay, it wouldn't be problematic if our state government also issued "pro-choice" plates, but they don't. Come on, Virginia, you're a blue state now; get with the program.

The above should not be construed as an invitation to get into an argument about abortion or politics.

But the one VA specialty plate series I have hated above all others is the one that reads, in some sort of multicolored crayon font, "Kids First."

My reasons for raging about such a thing are complex; basically, I don't agree with "kids first." We have too much emphasis on kids as it is. We're not supposed to be adults living in a kids' world; they're supposed to be kids living in an adult world, and preparing for it. And too many people use "for the children" as a shield to mask their own Puritanical dislikes.

So, when I saw this plate,   I about tore a muscle laughing

I honestly can't remember if I saw it first on the road, or on the internet. I suspect the latter; there are over 7 million registered vehicles in Virginia, and besides, if I'd seen it on the road, I would have wrecked from laughing so hard.

Like most states, we're pretty picky about questionable tags. You can't get "FUCK," for example, or racially-charged terms. There are procedures in place to stop those before they ever get stamped. Somehow, though, this one got through.

At least, it did until some Puritanical wet-nose decided that "Eat The Kids First" was a sexual reference, and got the tag retroactively canceled.

You have to have a certain sort of mind to believe that it's a sexual reference. I don't have that sort of mind. I envisioned a zombie apocalypse, not a massive orgy of statutory rape. The thought never ever crossed my mind, and I have an exceptionally dirty one. In retrospect, I'm not sure that a joke about cannibalism was any better. Still, it was, obviously, a joke.

But it crossed someone's filthy, disgusting mind, and so there came to be just a little less humor on the road. Not in the world, though; as you can see from the link above, the plate is immortalized in pictures on the internet. And from what I've seen, similar ones have slipped through the cracks in other states, too.

It might be tempting to point out that I expressed a dislike of other kinds of specialty plates, so isn't it hypocritical of me to rail against someone else's objection to one? Well... consider that I have never tried to get any kind of license plate canceled, and maybe you can see that there's a difference. We don't have the right to not be offended. I'm perfectly capable of hating something without getting all activist about it. In fact, it's a core theme of my personality.

Which is not to say that I willingly support businesses run by people with what I consider the wrong politics. I just don't expect legislation to back me up on my boycotts. But that's another topic.

And it looks like the business that provided the above prompt probably got similar backlash. I risked getting put on a List by typing "CHOP kids first" into Google, and one of the results starts out: "At the CHOP Primary Care practice (formerly Kids First) in West Chester, PA, we believe that every child should have a medical home..."

Fortunately, Kid Sex Change   is apparently still in business, for those of us who have to giggle at such things. Word spacing, people. It exists for a reason. Use it! Or don't, and risk the juvenile attention of the internet.