Walking through Midway Airport on the way to Florida this morning, I noticed a sign that said “Service dogs allowed on leashes. All other animals must be in carriers.”

Not long after that, a woman walked by with a service dog wearing one of those little bibs with the words SERVICE DOG embroidered on its back.

Minutes later, a K-9 dog came by with its nose pointed toward all our backpacks. The dog stuck its sniffer into the edge of my Swiss Gear back and moved on. No drugs here.

The only drugs I carry are some mild anti-anxiety pills called Citalopram. Those are my concession to the fact that a bit of casing has worn off the wiring of my soul. In fact, it was probably never there, but life’s lessons have taught me that pre-emptive measures are far better than dealing with the effects of almost anything.

Along with the anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medications, I’ve learned a ton of methods to catch anxious or worried thoughts well before they take over my frontal lobes. Recently I heard a story about a man that had been in a car accident in his early twenties. He never got treatment after his big concussion, but it turned out the frontal lobes of his brain had literally died and withered away over the years. That left him with little capacity for judgment. He was thus quite compulsive and did things that were bad for his diabetes on a regular basis.

But it wasn’t until later in life that someone actually did a brain scan and found out that his brain was 1/4 dead. His kids said to themselves, “That explains a lot.”

I know that I am not missing any lobes because I had a brain scan a few years ago and all the parts were there. Instead my method in life for dealing with compulsive instincts is to focus them on positive things like running or petting animals in public.

At fourteen I started serious running and have kept it up all my life. But it was years later that I realized a penchant for petting dogs in public. Dogs tend to like me for that. Some recognize my penchant for dog-petting and seem to gravitate for a head or butt scratch.

But that’s not allowed with service dogs. It is bad form to distract them from their duties.

So I mutter under my breath, “Hello, Service Doggy.” And leave it at that. It has to be left as a cosmic connection. And that’s good enough for me.