He GITSRDUN for good taste

You think you’re so clever.

You, with the yen for the personalized vehicle license plate. The one that’s mean or insulting or just plain nasty.

Tom Fry knows you’ll try anything to slip one through.

Foreign words.

Funny spellings.

Even the old mirror trick. 3MTAE?

Please. Don’t bother.

After all, Fry’s the guy who considers more than 600 vanity-plate applications for the state of Idaho each year. As registration program supervisor for the state Department of Transportation, he approves the personalized words and numbers that show up on bumpers across the Gem State.

Or not.

“You’d be surprised at some of the things,” said Fry, 56, reached at his Boise office. “They make you turn red when you read it.”

But Fry, a U.S. Air Force veteran, doesn’t blush a bit when he reviews – and rejects – the dozens of unacceptable applications he receives each year. He can’t say how many he turns down, and he doesn’t keep a list of what they were. But he knows why they were rejected.

“No obscenity,” he said. “We don’t do anything that’s gang-related, anything that’s race-related.”

Of the 1.6 million vehicles registered in Idaho last year, some 53,000 sported personalized plates.

But none of those included BUGGER, SCHMUCK, KRAUT or a Bosnian word that means “prostitute.”

And Fry is proud of that. Many of the applications for questionable plates are easy to spot, he said. The F-word spelled with a PH, for instance. HELL spelled out in numbers. Insults of varying origin and intensity.

“If you can think of a bad word, someone is interested,” Fry said.

Hopeful applicants can submit up to three suggestions for personalized plates, along with plausible explanations of their meanings. Often, Fry and his staff will reject one or two but approve another.

For verification, Fry relies on a host of English and foreign language dictionaries and his own experience of the world. As new slang makes its way into the language, he turns to staffers with teenagers, to online dictionaries and to law enforcement officers familiar with drug and crime lingo.

Most applicants accept Fry’s rejection quietly. A few appeal the decision to a state committee.

“It doesn’t happen often, and we’ve always prevailed,” Fry said.

Cost of a personalized plate is $25 for the first year and $15 for each year after. People with prized plates must stay on top of their registration status. Often, others are waiting in the wings to snatch that snappy phrase away.

In fact, dealing with unacceptable applications is far less of a headache than coping with constant requests for the most popular plate, Fry said.

“It’s GITRDUN. Any kind of phonetic version, it’s been applied for,” he said wearily. “You guys need to watch different television.”