Vehicle Registration Stickers (An Anthropocene Reviewed-inspired essay)

Vehicle Registration Stickers 

In California, the color of vehicle registration stickers rotates every five years between red, yellow, blue, orange, and green, and is a symbol of quiet compliance or defiance. I assume for most people, renewing their car registration yearly is just another bill, but for me, it has always been more loaded than that.

In 1901, the first states began to require any vehicle to register with the government. By 1915, the DMV was created to manage all 191,000 registrations in California alone. In the early days of registration, states would issue a brand new license plate each year, with the year permanently listed on the metal rectangle. Today, the marker of current registration is a brand new, shiny, colored sticker with the next year’s number listed. If you don’t have it, you are in violation of California Vehicle Code section 4000(a)(1), which states that in order to drive a vehicle in California, the registration must be current and paid for. Violations of section 4000(a)(1) could result in a verbal warning, a ticket, or, for more serious or longer-term offenses, vehicle impounding. Today, the colored sticker in the corner of a license plate might seem like a minor footnote in the history of American transportation. But for my family, it has been a source of anxiety– my mother having received all three consequences of violating Section 4000(a)(1).

It all started when my mom, dad, and I lived in Utah for a couple of years in 2004-2006. My parents bought a brand new 2005 Ford Focus and it was bright red, with a racing stripe down the side. It got us around everywhere. My mom still has it, and while it’s hanging on by a thread, it’s still going strong.

Growing up, my family was comfortable financially, with my dad working as a software engineer until the dot-com crash of 2000. After he was laid off, our family’s financial struggles began. Constantly trying to make ends meet with only one parent working, my parents got that new Ford Focus, but only paid for one year of registration. Fast forward to 2006, when my family moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area (my dad having found a job in computers again!), and they were still struggling financially. Then, my dad was diagnosed with Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer, and passed away in October of 2007, only three months after his diagnosis. 

My mom did her best to grapple with her own grief while raising a 12-year-old daughter alone, but she had already struggled with clinical depression and addiction most of her life. This can look like having low energy, and it can also look like having a really hard time not only with planning for the future, but also dealing with anything government or red-tape related. 

With the money she received after my dad died, she paid off that new Ford Focus, but she ran into a bureaucratic hiccup when it came time to transfer the title and license registration over to California. Something about the title documentation and her marriage license and his death certificate– I don’t know exactly what it was, only that it took her another full eight years before she was finally able to get it resolved. She got a new California license plate, with the sticker in the top right-hand corner reading a then-current “2015.” 

If you’re keeping track of dates, that meant that my mom had been driving her Ford Focus with expired registration (from another state), for ten years. 

My mom has always bent the rules a bit- whether it be teenage antics growing up in San Francisco in the ‘60s (sneaking into concerts at Golden Gate Park, tripping on LSD at a Grateful Dead concert, to name a few) or borrowing money from a friend. For my mom, driving with an expired registration tag was something she adapted to quickly. While I am sure she felt anxiety about it, it was just life to her. Something she learned to cope with and rationalize and move on with her day from. She learned to spot CHP officers on patrol by checking her rearview mirror, making sure to avoid having them drive directly behind her. She learned what to say or how to act to ensure just a verbal warning when she inevitably would get pulled over. And she learned that if you had a license plate from another state, cops weren’t paying that much attention to you.

What that meant for me, though, becoming a teenager in the heart of this ten-year stretch, was that I, too, became a professional at spotting CHP officers. I had a sixth sense for spotting one on a town street or a freeway. I had to, because if the car ever got impounded, it would mean we lost our car. My mom didn’t have the money to get it out of an impound lot, nor did she have the money to get a new one. I didn’t end up getting my driver's license until I was 18, because I never wanted to drive the family car due to the risk of being pulled over (even then, I used my neighbor’s car to take my driver’s test!).

My mom taught me so many wonderful things. Including that life goes on if you don’t do everything exactly right. That money is just money, and it’s the people who matter most in life. That you can have only $10 to your name, and still have compassion and help those who need it more than you.

To me, though, vehicle registration stickers represent being on edge, fear of getting caught, and a needless disregard for simple societal rules. Those who know me best may joke that I am a rule-follower- I loathe cutting in lines, I pay every bill on-time, I go to the dentist every 6 months, I take my car in for regular oil changes and tire rotations, I take my dog in for her yearly check-up, I read every work email, and you bet that I pay for my yearly vehicle registration the week I get the renewal notice in the mail. 

It’s human nature to have a paradoxical desire to be just like our parents and everything but our parents. For me, I am who I am today– a loving, empathetic, super organized person–all due to my mom. She taught me everything I want to be, and everything I don’t.

After my mom finally got her current California license plate in 2015, she slipped back into the next manifestation of her struggle to tackle big bureaucratic challenges. When her car needed a smog and didn’t pass a few years later, and she didn’t have the money to help solve that issue, she went back to being on alert for CHP. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t affect our relationship– I wish I could just tell her to meet me at some coffee shop halfway between our houses for a casual afternoon coffee, but the weight of the fear I feel of her getting pulled over on her drive over, and then asking me for help to solve that issue of her own making, prevents me from asking. We’re a work in progress.

Vehicle registration stickers: while necessary, they’re more complicated than we think. I give them two stars.