A Reading Problem–Sort of

I have somewhat of a reading problem, but not in the traditional sense. I can read and comprehend very well, most of the time. What I cannot do, however, is stop reading–every word or letter I see. Yes, every street sign I pass I must read, even if I’ve been that way a million times. Every stop sign, yield sign, or No Parking sign calls to me: “Read me now!”

I read as much as I can on every billboard we pass. My favorites have very few words. It’s much easier on me when I am not driving, as you can imagine. In fact, when I drive in heavy traffic, I have to keep my eyes firmly on the road and cars around me to keep from being distracted by billboards.

But then, as I’m keeping my eyes on the car ahead, I see license plates. Ugh! More letters that I can’t avoid. But this time I can’t just read words; I have to read meaning into them. For example, PTL is easy–Praise the Lord. Even NLT seems pretty easy–New Living Translation. GBT is very distracting because I start connecting it with LGBT, easy enough, until I start thinking that recently I saw another letter added. What was that? A Q? Was it at the beginning or end? Very confusing.

And the vanity plates always grab my attention. Here are a few from Disney lovers for you to figure out:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This one used to be on a car parked down the street from our house:

Today when I was running errands, I saw PFD. My home town is Portland, Tennessee, so Portland Fire Department. Then TKV. A hard one! But I do have a friend named Kyle Vath, so I can see that he is The Kyle Vath. Steve’s license plate ends in TXJ. Sometimes my brother John is an immigration lawyer in Texas, so Texas John takes care of that. NGL is a challenge. My niece is Nila Jo Langlois, but I can’t spell Jo with a G, no matter how hard I try to make it work. So I give up and move on to another combination. Or, with relief, soon I’m back home where I can read ordinary things, such as books, magazines, the computer screen, or Christmas cards.

Isn’t it fabulous that I have such an inconsequential problem? As problems go, that’s about a minus ten on a scale of one to ten. But I do think it’s an odd problem to have, so I decided to explain it here.

Maybe that’s why I love collecting alphabet plates. The alphabet is never confusing. It’s just there, in its perfect order, always. Except for that Majolica plate I have that is missing an I. How did that happen? Maybe ABCs aren’t as soothing as I thought.

Think I’ll go read a book.