Non-Believer

A car passed me on the ride home from work today. It had one of those so called "vanity plates" on it. I've never understood the attraction of having a vanity license plate on your car. From what I understand, they cost a fair amount of money and they seem like a novelty, that once it wears off, you're pretty much stuck with it until it's ready to expire- or until you decide to pay another substantial amount of money again to get a regular old nondescript license plate (which, by the way, is my preference).

It seems to me that if you feel strongly about something and you want it plastered on your car, why not save a couple of bucks and buy a bumper sticker? I'm not particularly crazy about bumper stickers, but at least they're cheap.

I had a bumper sticker on a car of mine, maybe about 30 years or so ago. I'm not really the bumper sticker type and I don't know what possessed me to buy it, but my bumper sticker said, "I Brake For The Hell Of It". This was at a time where I would see a lot of bumper stickers that said, "I Brake For _____".

There were a multitude of these stickers around back then, each with their own variation of whatever the driver felt was special enough to proclaim it to the guy behind them. Usually the blank was filled in with "Tag Sales", and the people that had them on their cars may as well have had mine, since they would always break erratically- that is, when they weren't simply hopping out of their still moving cars once they finally spotted the elusive yard sale.

For some reason, I though my sticker was fairly clever and I put it on the back of my car. The cleverness wore off long before the bumper sticker did and I was left with the fading reminder of my store bought wisdom- pretty much until the car was eventually junked. It was the last bumper sticker I ever bought.

Anyway, the vanity plate on the car that passed me read, "BELEAVE". I had never seen this before. Was this a real word or a mistake? I figured it had to be a mistake. This person obviously meant "BELIEVE" and apparently screwed up the spelling on their license plate application. I say this because I live in an area where it's not unusual to see all sorts of bumper stickers, usually proclaiming some new-agey type of slogan like, "Goddesses Are Among Us", or "Buy Local".

I spent the rest on my ride imagining whether or not this person was aware of their mistake. Either way, they both had their pluses.

On the one hand, if they realized their mistake, they were obviously forced to still be driving around in this car before it could be replaced. Otherwise, why were they on the road right now? I imagined them getting up everyday, dreading the ride into work where they would be met once again with some variation of, "Hey Roger, I believe you're early for work today!" Each time, the crowd would laugh and give each other high fives as they walked away, leaving "Roger" to sit in his car, regretting his attempt at being an individual.

On the other hand, it could be that the person that owns it has no idea of their mistake and they're driving around, blissfully unaware that their Pollyannaish/Smug/ Self-Serving (pick one or more) message, which was meant to proclaim something profound, but instead only serves to proclaim that they are an ignoramus.

I have no problem with either one of those scenarios.

When I got home I looked up the word, and what do you know, it's a real word after all. According to the "Wiktionary" website (don't ask me, it was the first site that came up in my search), it's derived from the Middle English "beleven", which in turn is from the Old English "belǣfan".  "Belǣfan", apparently, merged with the Middle English "bliven". It should have been obvious.

Looks like it's my mistake.

I now take satisfaction in imagining that, in his attempt to inform the uneducated masses (of which I am a member), know-it-all "Roger" is instead having to explain over and over again to everyone who keeps pointing out his perceived mistake, that, no, it's not a mistake, "It's just the "third-person singular simple present of "beleaves"". I imagine him lying in bed, tossing and turning- night after sleepless night, alone, regretting the day he thought he was coming off as someone who was both smart and clever.

I'm OK with that scenario too.