I was flying home to see my wife, Brooke. We haven't been married for quite a year and I missed her very much; talking daily on the phone is not like seeing a person's face, and it doesn't meet the simple animal need to be next to someone. Especially someone who didn't breathe like a walrus. I often forget that I am, as C.S. Lewis said, "a soul with a body" and that talking on the phone or sending emails is merely a shadow of the real person.

I would see Brooke in a few hours, but at the moment I was to the last few pages of SkyMall, and I stumbled upon the most absurd item thus far: a personal branding device. With the personal brander, you could special-order it to have your initials on it, and then brand your steak with your initials. My first thought was how superfluous this item was: who is vain enough to buy a personal brander? But, in my second thought I pictured myself pulling steaks off the grill with my initials on them, and a patio-full of guests gushing in delight. Maybe a personal brander wasn't such a bad idea. It would show my dedication to giving my guests the best possible steak, and it would be my way of standing behind my work.

I could picture Brooke shaking her head at me. She would tell me we didn't need a personal brander, that we could spend $49.99 on more important things, like food itself. And, she might not have thought it, but I'm sure the brander would be used on other materials: my dresser, the coffee maker, our cat. I mean, certainly experimenting with branding was a worthy scientific undertaking. I know I could brand the wooden bookcase but could I brand the paint on our front door?

The reality, though, is that it was not about the brander. It was about the fact I had walrus-man next to me and missed my wife and would have offered my firstborn for the ability to teleport home. It was about distraction. You see, when we buy things little pleasure centers in our brain light up, and tell us Everything is Okay, until we realize, either a few minutes or days or years (depending on the size of the item) that we're still not okay and we have to buy something else.

I put the magazine down and looked out the window, thinking of my wife. In a few hours I would see her, and then I wouldn't need a brander to distract me. The walrus-man shuffled in his seat; I turned and smiled at him.

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