I really like to look at license plates when I’m out driving or riding in a car. It’s just a quirky little habit I have, but I confess I sometimes fantasize about seeing a car doing something relatively innocuous and noting its license plate, and then finding out later it was involved in some major crime, and I go to the police with my information and save the day. Yes, yes, I am a major geek.

About, oh, six years or so ago the new Ontario license plates came into effect with four letters at the beginning instead of just three. For a license plate watcher it was an exciting time and poor Sir Monkeypants had to listen to me exclaiming about it every time we went out in the car together for months. I was amazed at how fast they were handing out the letters, and it seemed incredible to me that they could possibly be selling so many new cars in Ontario in such a short time frame. Within six months or so, I’d seen plates around the province starting with AA and going all the way up to AM — over 2 300 000 new plates. Could they really sell so many new cars on an ongoing basis?

At the time Sir Monkeypants theorized (I think he just wanted to keep me quiet) that they had assigned certain prefixes to certain cities or areas, and were not handing them out sequentially. Now it seems he must have been right, since it’s like, five years later, and I still haven’t seen anything farther along than AT. In the Ottawa area there certainly are a lot of AC plates, which seems to imply that the 575 000 AC plates were given to Ottawa to hand out as needed. I’ve been waiting ages to spot one that starts with a B. Man, that’ll be an exciting day. Poor Sir Monkeypants.