I no longer respect life

In Colorado, you have several license plate choices. You can choose the typical one or you can choose many "specialty" plates. Which include (and I'm not making this up) an Italian American Heritage Plates and "Support the Horse" plates. At this point, I'd like to ask Colorado WTF? It's just bizzarre.

There was even a big expose' on how the "Committed to a Cure" plates (with a pink ribbon for breast cancer) was frustrating people because the extra money for the plates don't go towards any cancer research at all. People felt duped. It's called a "Breast Cancer Awareness" plate and I guess their point is that by you having those plates, you're helping people be more aware that breast cancer exists. And, as a side rant, I think that their frustration is just silly. There was, apparently, never a claim that the money went towards that anyway. Besides, it's not like anyone thinks that getting the ones that say "Bronco Country" are going to donate money to getting us running backs that might actually make it through the whole next season.

Anyway, when I got my own plates in Colorado, I chose to get ones that said "Respect Life" in the middle of the plates. They were pretty, they had Columbine flowers on them, and I was going through a REALLY girly phase at the time. See, I had just gotten out of a job where I was the only female in the whole nation in that job. Getting these plates was a way to give a big (albeit stylishly well manicured) middle finger to all the crappy guys that I worked with and for.

Really, if they would've had ones that had a penis with an arrow through it and played Aretha Franklin's "Respect," I would've picked those instead. But since they didn't have that option, I chose the pretty plates. As for the phrase, well..I was fairly certain that it wasn't some anti-abortion message. But I wasn't sure if I was giving advice to people or proclaiming that I respected life. Hell, it could've been referring to Life cereal or even that cool boardgame...I had no idea.

Someone told me, years later, that they thought that it was about the tragedy that happened when two kids walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado and shot a bunch of teenagers. But then I felt like an ass. Because I bought the stupid plates without knowing what I was supporting. And besides, I didn't live in Colorado at the time of the shooting. I didn't know anyone who got shot and I didn't have to deal with the aftermath of that horrible day in my own community. I felt like a poser...and all of the sudden, I knew what Milli AND Vanilli felt like.

So my plates came up for renewal recently and instead of renewing my "old" plates, I got the normal Colorado ones. My car looks cooler with those ones anyway.

On a side note, I would TOTALLY change these plates in if they had ones with John Denver's face on it. The tagline could be "Bowl Cuts Rule" or "Support a John." You know, something classy.