Wednesday 5/5

Lucky

Can you go an entire day without using an acronym?  No, probably not.  We live in a world absolutely, positively overflowing with them.  For example, most web addresses start with “www,” which is the world wide web (I’m hoping you already knew that).  (Oh, and if you’re trying to think of an acronymless website without the “www,” think again, because they still start with “http” which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol.)  If you even think about the military, you’ll probably run into an acronym or two . . . thousand.  The military has so many that they even have an acronym for their acronyms: they have what are called TLAs, or Three Letter Acronyms.  Us non-militaries use G2G and LOL in our texts and twitter tweets so we can squeeze in every possible phrase, emotion, and reaction.  Or maybe because we’re just lazy. 

There’s a good chance you have one in your own daily vocabulary.  If you don’t, well you probably hear at least one daily.  Well, here’s one you definitely should know . . .

. . .because obviously the Texas Department of Transportation forgot to take this one out of the to-be-rejected-from-randomly-generated-license-plate-numbers.  (I only wish I were lucky enough to have gotten plates like these on my own car.  This picture is of a vehicle that was idling in front of me at a red light, one day.)  So who missed this?  And what are the odds? 

First, off, perhaps no one missed excluding WTF from six-digit texas license plates because they started being stamped over 30 years ago, before WTF meant anything.  And it’s not like anyone was going to go back and change any of them (we Texans don’t like change).  What you randomly get is what you randomly get.  Period.

So what are the odds?  Worse, mathematically speaking, now that Texas issues seven-digit plates.  Cross all the fingers you’ve got, because your chances are about one in ten thousand (not too bad, compared to the lottery).  Trust me, I crunched the numbers.  Too bad, huh?

What’s the best way to get your favorite acronym on you car?  Find the right bumper sticker…

By: S. Cole Garrett