Vanity

We took a lot of road trips when I was growing up. In fact, I've been to 49 of the 50 states, via road trip (well, I did fly to Hawaii). The ability to keep two girls from fighting like cats and dogs in the back of the van for hours on end was an impressive gift my father and mother both possessed. I guess it helped that I never got car sick from reading in the car and my sister and I both loved to play a variety of games in the car. We could ride for upwards of 10 hours without killing each other, until we got to the hotel - then all bets were off.

From the traditional "I Spy" and "Road Bingo" to the more creative "Counting Cows" game that my mom made up, we enjoyed playing those games even when we got to be teenagers. Another family favorite, spurred by my father's love of geography, was writing down all of the state license plates (or county names if we were just traveling in the state of Georgia - we have 159) we would see on a road trip. The person to see the largest number of plates from differing states by the time we would get to where we were going would "win."

If you saw a vanity plate, and could figure out what it said, it counted double. This has always made me secretly want a vanity plate. I even tried to get Kev a Red Sox-oriented vanity plate for his birthday a few years ago, but even in the state of Georgia, Red Sox nation is going strong and everything I could come up with was already taken - and I came up with 15 different options.

So, here are the ideas I have for my greyhound-oriented vanity plate that I secretly want and will probably never get. But maybe one day a kid who is playing a silly car game on the way to Disney, instead of watching a DVD, with his or her family will get double points when they see my tag.

Vote for your favorite at the poll to the right. Who knows? Maybe it will happen after all.