Discovering The Truth

Apr 28

I just realized that this is the second article that is car-related within the past few days or so. Anyways, I just wanted to say that I am not getting a new car or am involved in the process at all. It’s mere coincidence.

Anyways, onward with the post.

So I don’t know about most people, but I do know about me. And one thing that I know is that I absolutely cannot stand it when I can’t figure something out. For example, I cannot stand it when I lose something because that is in essence a puzzle (the location of something) that I cannot figure out. It will consume me to no end!

So for the past couple of months, I have been slightly perturbed by a puzzle. No it’s not a puzzle in the normal sense. Basically I would drive around southern California and obviously see lots of cars. Now occasionally I would see something that looks like this:

I blurred out the important information because I just yanked the picture from some random site.

Now I always wondered what it was. Now obviously you can see what it is now because I found a picture for you and it’s not moving at 70 mph. But imagine it as something 6 inches square and on the back window of a car and moving exceptionally fast. Plus you don’t want to get too close to it else you might get into an accident! And although I would see them around some of the time, I never really saw them in a context by which I could actually look at it.

And so my mind imagined what it could be. Some of the things that I thought of were:

• It’s a secret club for something and that badge indicates that they’re in the club

• My eyes were playing tricks on me

• It was a new hip brand of clothing/auto accessories/whatever

• It was a humorous bumper sticker type thing

So basically my mind would stew about it for a few minutes every time that I saw one of these things. And this went on for a couple of months! Of course I tried to remedy this all by searching for it on the Internet, but you can imagine how hard it would be to find it. Basically all I knew was that:

1. It was red

2. It had a number on it

3. It was on the back of cars

Now those are some pretty broad and sweeping search terms by which my search engines could not help me with. Alas, I was to be forever confounded…

Until finally one Sunday I saw one of these on the back of a car in the parking lot of First Chinese Baptist Church. I took the minute or so to read it and discovered that it’s a DMV Temporary Operating Permit! I promptly felt satisfaction seep over me like a gentle wave. :P But truly I do enjoy it when things make sense, and those moments when realization set in are very nice indeed.

Even with the knowledge of what these were, it was still hard to find information about them online. I must admit that I still don’t know all that there is to know about these, but I don’t really care that much anymore because I know what they are. Hopefully if someone is in the same conundrum as I was, they will happen upon this page and be satisfied as well.

Anyways, it’s interesting because I’m like that with other things as well. The truth really does set you free! (Even if it’s a small dose of it.)