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COPYRIGHT 2004 International Reading Association Inc.
"There it is, there it is!" I shouted from the back seat. "There is the Z. Right there on that sign. I win! I win!" It doesn't seem very long ago that I was a young child playing Road Sign Bingo with my brother on long family car trips. Words and letters became our entertainment as we searched for all the alphabet letters in road signs (in order, of course) or tried to find each one of the 50 United States on the license plates of vehicles as they whizzed by to unknown destinations.
How times have changed. Now, each state has a variety of license plate designs, and the number of vanity plates, which often carry new codes to be deciphered, is on the rise. Owners of vanity plates usually play with language, manipulating letters and sounds to tell us a little something about themselves in six to eight spaces. Just this morning on my way to work, I saw YRUFATT on the back of a catering van, L8R G8R on a sports car, and MOM X 2 on a minivan. However, during a recent car trip I was reminded of just how important these words on the backs of cars can be as a lesson in media literacy.
The dialogue
I had just picked up my 14-year-old daughter from school, and we were driving down the road when she said, "Mom, what does that bumper sticker mean?" "I can't see it, honey. What does it say?" I replied (making another mental note to get my eyes checked). "It says, 'The media are only as liberal as the conservative businesses that own them.'" I'm afraid I was only half listening, distracted by the problems of what to cook for dinner, e-mails I should have answered at work, and a blue sports car cutting into my lane. "What do you think it means?" I asked. "Well, it is kind of confusing. You always hear people complain about the liberal press. But that bumper sticker...
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