You got a tag?

"You got a tag?" is a question we are bombarded with many, many times a day. Ethan's newest obsession is name tags - it emerged about two weeks ago. He is absolutely mesmerised with them and tags seem to dominate his thoughts for most of every day. As a "neurotypical" being, I find it hard to imagine how he could think about name tags all day - it really doesn't seem that fascinating to me!
Tonight we were sitting around the table eating dinner and out of the blue Ethan comments to Nathan "your tag is a rectangle". He was obviously thinking back to earlier in the day when Nathan was leading our church service. Nathan was standing up the front at the pulpit and I came in the back door with the boys. From the back of the church (15 - 20 metres away) Ethan immediately spotted that Nathan was wearing a name tag, commenting in a loud voice "daddy's got a tag!!". The tag was a rectangle shape, with "Nathan" printed on it. After Sunday School, Ethan could barely wait to race up to Nathan and scrutinise his name tag from close range. After he had a good perusal, he did his excited autism dance around daddy. Ethan then must have been thinking about daddy's tag for the rest of the day.
I have made Ethan his very own laminated name tag, with his photo and name on it. He wears it attached to a lanyard around his neck and is very hesitant to take it off around the house. He loves to wear it out and about too. I won't allow him to take it to kindergarten because I think he would be too distracted and over-focused on it all day.
Ethan insisted on wearing his tag to the supermarket the other day, and his main aim during the entire shopping trip was to ask every person we passed "you got a tag?". He then proceeded to check their person for a name tag- if they didn't have a tag he would say "oh, you don't got a tag." But if they were wearing a tag (ie. all the Woolworths staff!) he would try to read the name then very excitedly say "You got a tag!!!!" and dance around with excitement.
Maybe life would be more fun for us all if we got excited about everyday objects like name tags.
So if you see us and Ethan interrogates you about whether "you got a tag?", you'll understand why!!