#itsahand

California allows people to purchase vanity license plates for their vehicles.  That's very nice.  The money goes to support various causes that I don't have any problem with.  For me, vanity plates are like tattoos; I want one in theory, but there isn't anything I want in particular.  Furthermore, like tattoos, most of the vanity plates other people get are stupid.

Anyway, there are several classes of special plates you can get in California, supporting the environment, the 1984 Olympics, veterans, beautiful sunsets, etc.  They're listed here.  One class is headed:

Have A Heart, Be A Star, Help Our KIDS

Well.  Let's not even get into why KIDS is in all caps.  I'm pretty sure it doesn't stand for anything.  But anyway, it seems like a good cause.

The fees collected from the Kids License Plates are deposited in the Child Health and Safety Fund and used for programs that will help keep California kids safe through injury prevention efforts.

You may choose a hand, heart, star or plus sign for the sequential plate.

Personalized KIDS plates can have 2-6 characters (numbers/letters) including the choice of a symbol (hand, heart, star or plus sign). The symbol may be placed anywhere within the configuration.

Hearts and stars are cute.  I can even see some use for a plus sign.

But seriously.

WTF hand?

I defy you to find me a license plate utilizing this hand that is not is not stupid, or even makes the least sense at all.

You can't do it.

Here's a story.  Some years ago I was watching Alias with a gentleman acquaintance.  We didn't watch Alias very often, and I had no idea what was ever going on.  In this particular episode some characters were out in the desert or something and they came upon a mysterious box and wondered what could be inside of it.  My gentleman acquaintance said,

"It's a hand."

And it was.

I believed him to be some sort of clairvoyant wizard, but the truth is probably that that guess was fairly obvious if you had been paying attention to the rest of the episode.

But anyway.  I think, "it's a hand" quite a lot ever since then.  And imagine a severed hand in a box out in the desert.

Maybe, you think, I am bringing a lot of my own baggage to my judgment of this hand character on license plates.

But the hand is undeniably disembodied.  And I, personally, prefer not to associate disembodied hands with disadvantaged children.