kicking puppies is bad

I was sitting in the passenger seat, staring absent-mindedly out the window the other day. As we sped by this giant SUV, I noticed its vanity plate. And I turned to my friends and said, “Did that guy’s licence plate just say ‘Sow Hole?’ What does that even mean? Is he saying he really enjoys pigs?”

At this point we had passed the car. But my friends were curious about the “Sow Hole” license plate, and the guy who picked it. So we slowed down to let the SUV pass us. My husband then confirmed my suspicion, “Yeah. It really does say ‘Sow Hole’. And it did. S-O-W-H-O-L-E. This prompted us to pull out our phones and search the internet for “Sow Hole”. Not much came up, but it all related to pigs. We re-passed the SUV, making snarky comments about the burly dude driving it. If you ever wondered what a someone who loves pigs looks like, he looked like he spent a lot of time at the gym, had these douchey sunglasses with flames on them and his long hair was slicked back in a pony tail.

My husband asked his co-workers the next day, “If you saw a license plate that said ‘S-O-W-H-O-L-E’, would it mean anything other than ‘Sow Hole, I really like pigs!’” They seemed pensive for a moment, and concluded that if they saw it, they would think, “That dude really like pigs”.

It was three days later, as we were driving to work, that my husband said, “I bet he meant: so whole. ” And he probably did. I made a parse error. And, by the power of suggestion, was able to spread that to everyone around me. After I said “Sow Hole”, no one was able to see it as anything else. I wonder if that guy ever imagined that a large group of people saw his plate and thought “That dude really likes pigs.” On the other hand, ‘so whole’ also seems like a kind of pompous, arrogant, superiour, douchey thing to say. Like he is really *that* much better than the rest of us. I think if I had that license plate and had to choose how people interpreted it, I would choose “Sow Hole”. Maybe not.