stick em if you got em?

i’ve seen something lately that confused me, but i think i figured it out…

…but first, a brief note for all my non texas based readership. while a lot of the states still use plate stickers for vehicle registration and/or inspection, texas doesn’t. that went away quite a while back – like, pre y2k. we had two window stickers for a while, one each for registration and inspection, then just the one registration (but you had to show them a document showing you had the vehicle inspected before they’d register you) and then, finally, as of this year, it’s just the registration sticker with no inspection.

some of us got in on that new new a little early, but i digress…

so, a week or so ago, i saw a car pull up at the cirle k near my buddy’s shop. something caught my eye, tho – on the front license plate, on the little raised corner square where a sticker WOULD go, was this not texas, there was a sticker – and it said “VOID” in big letters. i had seen this a couple of other times, but only in the last few months.

“why would you put the void sticker on your plate?”, i wondered. but then i figured it out when i had to deal with my own registration crap this week. i guess the paper that they use to print our registration stickers is a template, so it, of course, comes with a peel off for the plate sticker…

i noticed the instructions for it, “peel from any corner…” and the label for it, “plate sticker” are printed in both english AND spanish…but the actual verbiage of the sticker, the “VOID – Do Not Use” is only in english, so spanish speakers don’t know what it says and therefore attach it to their plate.

now, don’t get me wrong – i am the first person to say if you’re going to live in a country, you need to speak the primary language of that country or your doomed to fail. that’s not racism – that’s just a fact.

but it does explain what i’ve seen – all three vehicles were driven by folks of hispanic origin, and all were not in the best of shape, so these weren’t wealthier folks. they’re just trying to follow ALL the rules now, just in case the raiders come (funny how that’s not in the news really, huh?) and so they’re making sure all the ducks are in a row. i pointed it out to the spanish speaking lady who helped me the other day, hopefully it gets “bubbled up”, as she said it would, so that this can be fixed. it’s a little thing, but it’s a thing…if anything, i figure it has the OPPOSITE of the intended effect, because if a cop sees that, he’s going to wonder why it’s there, and it won’t take but a second to realize they don’t speak english, which means there’s an infinitely better chance they’re not in the country by the letter of the law…and that’s when the real problems start.