Please Explain

It’s my belief that it’s only polite to affix an explanatory license plate holder around an ambiguous license plate. If I can’t decipher your jumbled, vowel-free catchphrase at a glance, your money has been wasted. In high school, my license plates said GO BARB. No explanation needed, although there was a story behind it.

But just because you can make out the words, doesn’t mean you can make out the meaning behind them. Take this plate I saw yesterday. I was in the parking lot of IKEA when I happened across a Honda minivan with the following plates: BOY MOM, but the “O” in MOM had been replaced with one of those blue heart symbols.

This one definitely requires an explanation. I can understand a “boy” loving his mother, but once you’re old enough to be driving a minivan, chances are you have kids of your own (why else would you drive a minivan), which makes it a little weird for you to still be a mama’s boy. Say you’re the mom, in which case this should read MOM BOY, like “mom loves her boy.” Or, maybe this is a Modern Family. Okay, let’s go with that for a second. The Mom IS a Boy. Mr. Mom, perhaps. Still doesn’t make sense, because of that damn heart in the middle of MOM. I’m at a loss. If you know the person who owns these plates, please seek an explanation for me. Because all of my interpretations are weird and creepy.