iStockphoto
Florida license plates
Most people aren’t overly concerned with the letters and numbers on their license plate and are content to settle for a random assortment. However, one woman in Florida was understandably surprised when she received one that probably wouldn’t make it past the censors if you tried to put it on a vanity plate.
Car owners tend to be painfully familiar with the costs that come with buying and maintaining a vehicle, and the specifics of your license plate don’t tend to be a top priority if you’re on a budget.
Every single state in America offers alternate and specialty plates that you usually have to pay a premium for (with some of that money commonly being funneled back to causes and initiatives linked to them), and you also have the option to shell out more for a vanity plate that features a customized string of figures as opposed to a random one.
That was not the route a woman in Florida decided to go before she received a new plate in the mail, but it would be fair to think that was the case based on what she got.
A woman in Florida will have the option to return a license plate that reads ‘SQZ A55’
The state of Florida rejects hundreds of requests for custom vanity plates each year; the list of ones it shot down in 2021 includes DZZNUTS, , FAAART, and A22MANN.
Whoever was responsible for that last one tried (and failed) to use numbers to slip through the cracks, as there are certain digits that resemble letters they can be swapped out for (for example, 5318008 might seem innocuous at first glance, but that’s not the case if you’re familiar with old-school digital calculators).
According to WESH, Nancy Dello Stritto did not go out of her way to request a special license plate, and she didn’t know she was due for a new one before an envelope contaning a replacement for her current tag recently showed up in the mail at the retirement community where she resides in Pompano Beach.
However, she was very surprised by the arrangement of the six characters that greeted her when she opened it up: “SQZ A55.”
If I have to explain why she was caught off guard, you are probably not old enough to know in the first place, and I’m going to assume everyone else reading this had the same realization the 76-year-old had when she looked at it for the first time.
The agency that issue the plate said it can be swapped out for a new one at no cost, and while Dello Stritto was initially planning on taking advantage of that offer, she has seemingly decided to stick with “SQZ A55” for the time being, saying, “I can handle it if I can get a few honks here and there. Actually, being over 70, I might like a few honks.”
Good for you, Nancy. Good for you.