Somebody stole my license plate.

At one point my two brothers and I all had older Jeep Wagoneers.  The three of us are also big fans of Edward Abbey’s book “The Monkey Wrench Gang”, which is why we named out property in Duchesne “Back of Beyond Ranch”.   And to mesh the three things together, we got personalized license plates for the three Jeeps.  My older brother got BEYOND1, I got BEYOND2 and my little brother got BEYOND3.   At some point my older brother and I both had two 4-wheel drive vehicles, so he took BEYOND2, and I got BEYOND4 and BEYOND5.

Well, the last time I had BEYOND5 on a registered vehicle was in 2011, my Subaru Impreza.

Last month my brother posted on Facebook this picture he took, it seems that someone had acquired my BEYOND5 plate while it was unregistered.

We didn’t know what to think about it, we didn’t think anyone else have the same confluence of life choices that would make that plate relevant. 

As it turns out they probably don’t – since it could have a completely different meaning.  One of my teacher friends at another school commented on it on Facebook, and today I asked her what her comment was all about.  Seems that one of her ex-students is part of a Boy-band named Beyond5.

Yeah, somebody stole my license plate in order to honor a boy band.  I’m not sure how I feel about that.  But I was under the impression that a personalized license plate had to be dormant for more than just a couple years before it could be snatched up by someone else.  It’s not a big deal, but I’m still a little curious, so I think I’m going to contact the DMV and find out exactly what the rules are.

Either way, I still have the old BEYOND5 plates, so I can still display them in my garage and retell this story every now and again.