Holy mother of Yoda.

Even I thought I was kidding about the whole flea collar thing (see previous post), but sadly, I wasn’t far off. I’m on my way to my local Pets ‘R Us to buy myself...

– go ahead, guess –

a pet I.D. tag.

And for exactly the same purpose as Fido. If someone finds me, hopefully they’ll get me to my rightful owner. Or rather, the hospital who hopefully will call my husband’s number on my shiny new bone-shaped I.D. tag.

I’m in the process of training for my first marathon. And the first rule of running is to have some identification on you in case you should, say, suffer a brain aneurism in the middle of a park path. (This actually happened to a “Runner’s World” editor who did not have any I.D. but did manage to make it home before being rushed to the ER.)

You can buy non-bone-shaped I.D.s at various specialty running outlets. Nobody I know runs with a wallet, so these military-looking metal plates attach to your shoe or wrist or nose ring and off you go. The thing is, they’re about $20, which seemed kinda high to me. Especially when I remembered I could go off to my local Pets ‘R Us and have my own personal tag engraved for less than $10, plus a coupon on flea spray.

So the question becomes, am I the only person on earth who finds they need pet products? Are there others out there buying themselves squeaky toys or dog shampoo? How far off the rails have I really gone?