Oklahoma decided that everybody gets new license plates this year instead of stickers. I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought. The new plates are some sort of laminate plastic with a high tech film. They have replaced the Native American shield with a picture of an Indian Man shooting an arrow into the sky. (I think it is based on a sculpture in front of the Gilcrease Museum.)

But, as always, I need to get back on point. One of the best kept secrets in Tulsa is that there is a tag agent downtown. They don’t have lines, they are nice instead of being rude and it is about 200 feet from my office building. So I was busily working, and putting off getting a tag, and a coworker came over and said that he had seen the weirdest thing at the tag office.

I had to ask what was weird and he said that they had a tag with “666” on it sitting on the counter. Nobody would take it. That fascinated me. Why would anybody care? I know that Hollywood portrays us Christians as loonies who beat wives and children, play with snakes, and recoil in horror at the three numbers. We all know that 666 is the mark of the beast, right?

We know all sorts of things. We know that during Barack Obama’s campaign that you texted him at 62262 and his toll free number had 1-866-6 in it. So that shows he’s evil right?

Well it turns out that phobia may be wrong. In fact it probably is wrong. More recent research based on more ancient texts of Revalation than were available before now show that the number of the beast is 616.

Oops. Somehow, 616 just doesn’t have the same evil connotations as 666. I can see why the truth hasn’t caught on. There is a lot of invested work in books, movies, sermons, anti-Obama web sites, and so on concerning 666.

Back to my story. After my friend told me about the tag, I popped up, grabbed my stuff and ran on over. I had to wait in a rare line of 4 people. I got to the front, and asked if they still had the 666 tag, because I didn’t see it. Everybody in the office turned to look at me including those over in the driver’s license line. The clerk asked, does your existing tag have 666 in it? I said no. Anyway to finish an overlong story I got my tag.

So leave me alone. Go find 616BOI and harrass him! He is the devil worshipper not me.