"Ya, KIA, Ya!"

I drive around my suburban neighborhood in a minivan.
It's actually a KIA Sedona. And I like it. A lot.

We just call it The KIA. And that has become its given name.

Adam, who is 22 and who has, shall we say, a different driving style than I do, mocks me whenever I am driving and I accelerate to pass someone.

"Ya, Kia, Ya!" He shouts as if he were driving (no pun intended) a team of horses.

Mom accelerates.
Adam shouts: "Ya, KIA, Ya!"

It's even better when he does it with a Cuban accent, which makes it sound like he's yelling at the KIA to STOP.

"Ya, KIA, Ya! Por favor, basta ya!"

(Sorry, you have to actually speak Spanish to get that one and it's kind of impossible to translate. Just trust me on this. He's asking it to please stop.)

We laugh every time. (But then, you know, we're easily entertained...)

So, I had been thinking of getting a personalized license plate. (Okay, a VANITY plate. =D)

My original one, Smrtqbn (that also happens to be my Twitter name in case you want to follow me, but that's not important right now) has expired and I was trying to come up with a new plate.

SIDE NOTE: We applied for Cuba2Go, which is the name of my online business Cuba To Go!, and I got very excited about that, but the Braniacs Who Work At the California DMV wouldn't approve it (I am so not kidding about this!) because it sounded (wait for it....) racist to them. (Racist?? Seriously? Look at the stuff that has slipped by them!!!)

We even showed them extensive documentation that Cuba to Go! was indeed our business name and was REGISTERED WITH THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA as such, but no go.

Which now left us pondering other clever combinations of letters to make some kind of a mobile statement as we drove around town in The KIA.

How about "Ya, KIA, Ya!" ?

Yay! How cool is that?
We got kind of excited about it, until we put the letters together as they would appear on the license plate....

It was my 95 year old Cuban mom who was the first to say it: "Parese algo Japones."

Yep. YAKIAYA sure sounds like a Japanese surname.

Shut up. I know. So, who needs a vanity plate?

I have other ways to recognize my KIA.  ;-)