As previously admitted, one of my regular guilty pleasures is reading Dear Abby, partly so I can look for letters with which to taunt my longtime newsroom neighbor, news editor Kim Jackson.
“Hey Chief,” I will say whenever I spot something about a husband who is lazy, addicted to porn, etc., “I see your wife got another one of her letters published in Dear Abby.”
Well, there was no correspondence from Mrs. Jackson among today’s missives, but there was an entry that caught my eye: It was from a woman upset that her childless friend gave her dog the same name as the letter writer’s daughter.
Abby, somewhat surprisingly to me, considered that to be a “huge” misstep.
Myself, if a friend named a pet after one of my kids, I’d be more or less unmoved one way or the other; that is, it would leave me neither unhappy nor ecstatic.
However, if anyone were to name his/her dog or cat or lizard or goldfish Steve, I would take it as a huge compliment — especially if it were a dog or cat, as those are the two types of pets with which I have had the closest connections.
Btw, this is not the first time I’ve written on this subject, but prompted by that Dear Abby letter, I figured I’d return to the topic.
So what do you think: Anything bothersome about a person sharing a name with someone’s pet?
