{Complete Madness}: And Sometimes the {Vanity Plate} Chooses You

Paul’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he rolled his eyes as he took it out. He was expecting it to be spam or work. It’s not like it would be one of his friends. He hadn’t bothered to keep up with most of the people he knew from school. And he purposefully never became close with coworkers because all he wanted was to do his job and leave—that’s it, no extracurriculars.

Instead, his phone glowed with a notification that the package he was waiting on had finally been delivered. He quickly ran down the stairs and found it propped up against the mailbox.

When he got back upstairs, he opened it and saw his new license plate. It was one of those customized ones. What were they called again? Vanity plates? It was perfect, exactly what he ordered. Now the world would know he was PAULLLL. He had thought about getting something else, but why bother? This was really the best descriptor of himself. Everything else seemed fake. He was Paul, and that about summed him up. Add a few Ls for emphasis (and because PAUL and PAULL and PAULLL were all taken), and there you have it. Satisfied, he placed it on his dresser and went to try to get some sleep. He’d attach this masterpiece to his car in the morning.

Paul laid in bed sweating and restless all night, unable to fall or stay asleep even after kicking the blanket and sheets onto the floor. In the morning, he groggily stumbled out of bed, frustrated that the heat had kept him awake despite having his head almost literally inside the fan in his window.

Paul made his way to the kitchen and reached for the coffee container. He opened it, expecting the strong smell of coffee, but instead got nothing but plastic. He looked down and nearly dropped the container; it was completely empty. He must have had more coffee somewhere in the house, right? He always made sure he had extra hiding somewhere!

He frantically tore through his cabinets, looking high and low for just a few scoops of the life-giving elixir he needed so desperately. Reaching across the counter, he saw his vanity plate and did a double take.

The license plate now read: COFFEEE

“What?” He said aloud, and rubbed his eyes. Maybe in his caffeine and sleep-deprived state, he had misread what it said. When he looked at the plate again it said:

LETSSGO

“No…no…no…” he said backing away. What the actual hell was going on? Was this plate cursed? Magic? Was this some sort of electronic plate? Had he been charged extra for that??

RUGOING

The plate had changed again.

LETSSGO

RUGOING

LETSSGO

RUGOING

The plate changed every time Paul blinked. If this was how his day was going to go, he needed that coffee, desperately. Since there seemed to be none in the house, he grabbed the license plate and his keys and left.

He didn’t attach the plate right away. Something told him to wait and see what it would say before he attached it to his car. Something affirming or encouraging? Something negative? Anything at all?

He headed to the office, stopping on the way for a quick coffee at the place around the corner, where the man behind the counter calls everyone “buddy.”

“Have a great day, buddy!” he said

“I’m trying, man,” Paul waved on the way out.

Fifteen minutes later, he sat in his car in the parking lot outside his office, with the all-too-usual sense of dread eating away at his soul. But at least he had the coffee, which had grounded him in reality a bit. As the clock ticked over to 8:59 A.M., and he got ready to go inside.

Paul went to stow the license plate away in the glove compartment when he noticed at some point it had changed again.

DTCHWRK, it said, and Paul laughed incredulously.

There was no way this was happening he thought to himself.

“I can’t just not go to work,” he said, realizing how ridiculous it felt to be talking to a license plate. I’m already here.”

GO2PARK

“And do what exactly?”

OBSERVE

“What?”

LOOOKUP

Paul sat back and felt something wash over him that he hadn’t felt in awhile. A sudden urge to just drive, to shirk responsibility and do something just a little wrong. So he mustered up the courage and did just that.

As insane as it sounds, he listened to the license plate and drove away from work and to the park.

When he arrived, he found the park full of people and felt the usual agitation he’d come to expect around crowds.

He was about to call it a failed experiment and turn around, when he thought of the license plate’s instruction. “OBSERVE,” it had said. So, he took a deep breath and decided to just observe the people around him. A lot of them were families, little kids running around screaming and laughing while their parents sat on park benches chatting. The metallic ding of a baseball hitting a bat and some cheers. People walking the paths alone but enthralled by the nature that surrounded them, their eyes alit with life and wonder.

Paul walked through the park watching these people live their lives, hearing the laughter and the cheers and the yelling. He compared these jubilant sounds to his own life—the empty apartment, the job he hated, the lack of community—and was overcome with emotion. He sat down on a bench alone under the shade of a giant oak tree and let the tears flow freely. He had allowed himself to lose track of what life should be about. But being here amongst these happy people living their lives had shaken loose the dust and cobwebs that he had allowed to grow on his soul, and now he could feel it again: that desire to live and to seize the moments he had been given.

Paul spent the rest of the day in the park.

His work had called him several times, but he had sent them to voicemail every time. He could deal with those problems tomorrow. Today he sat in the grass, skipping rocks along the pond, eating from the food trucks that parked along the street.

He seized every opportunity and lived in every moment.

As the day faded into night, Paul thought about packing it up and heading home. It had been a good day, but then the second instruction from the license plate popped into his head: LOOOKUP.

He turned his chin upward to the sky and was blown away. The park was dark, with just a few lights to keep the path lit. The stars were easily visible against the dark blanket of night, and it was so beautiful that he sat on the bench and stared at the sky for hours, the stars his only company as he thought again about his life.

When Paul finally made it back to the car, he sat down and looked over at the seat that still had the license plate on it and it read PRESENT. Paul smiled and nodded understanding almost immediately what it meant.

“Thank you.” He said and drove home.

The license plate never changed again. It remained PRESENT for the rest of Paul’s life, and though he never knew what it was that had made it change in the first place, he remained grateful for the rest of his days to the license plate that changed his life.