I WAS once told that ol' blue eyes, Frank Sinatra, used to say, "I don't wear rings, I know who I am". If this is true, then Frank was one of the lucky few, as we all feel lost at some point, don't we?

There are so many holes we can be put in these days we could be forgiven for feeling like a pigeon, and while in a philosophical sense I'm against such practices, I think I have come up with another category to file ourselves under.

It's a simple choice of two, and I believe this pigeonhole better represents a person's overall outlook on life, and doesn't have the nasty side-effects created by other well-known labels like religion, race or sexual preference.

It is this: do you fill the car up with petrol when the light on the dashboard comes on?

Save your applause for the end, I'm just getting started.

This is a moral fork in the road many of us face every week. Granted, the price of petrol has added to the drama, and gone are the days of putting in five dollars to roll into work, where you left your wallet the previous day.

I've always been one to hold off filling my car up until absolutely necessary, an approach that has on more than a few occasions led to me running out of petrol. I have little landmarks all over this town where I have come to a complete stop. I'm not sure what the psychology behind all this is, and I'd be too scared to look for the answer.

Driving to training this week, I picked up my teammate and neighbour Ben Hudson, and as we took off through the streets of Carlton we realised the petrol gauge was very low, and the car's best guess was that we had 16 kilometres in us before we had to call a cab. I looked over at Ben and he at me, and in that moment we decided to do a Thelma and Louise and "just go for it!"

To my eternal joy I discovered that Ben, like me, is a non-filler-upper. We made it to training and back again with one solitary kilometre worth of fuel left in the tank. It was the ride of a lifetime.

This concept of self image is one that struck a chord with me this week for a couple of reasons. The first was a somewhat unflattering photo in The Sunday Age of me as a 17-year-old recruit, and I joined our city of Melbourne in a collective gasp at how little and youthful I was. I'm surprised someone from AFL House didn't step in and deregister me on the grounds of not yet being through puberty.

Body image is not just an issue of the celebrities in the glossy magazines either. As I sat in a Footscray cafe grabbing some lunch this past week, I found myself next to an older lady who I could tell barracked for the Bulldogs. Without hesitation, she barked at me: "Have you lost weight?"

If only she'd seen me back in 2000, I thought to myself.

Sitting back down to order an extra-big lunch to appease my new friend, I flicked through The Age (of course) before turning my attention to the latest edition of Vogue magazine. And discovered that, among the male modelling fraternity in the fashion capitals of Paris and Milan, skinny is all the go. Happy days, I mused. Over here, in the football industry, skinny can get you chastised over lunch!

All any of us skinny footballers can do now is wait for Paris and Milan to call and we'll be sprinting down the runway. Until that call comes, it's nice to know we've got football to help pass the time.

Another reason for this introspective glance this week is that we're about to come up against the footballing equivalent of The Beatles — Geelong. Meeting the best side in the competition will be a war with many small battles fought all over the ground, but it could be won or lost on how we see ourselves. This is even before the ball has been bounced.

The Cats have been there before, and for the last 18 months certainly sit at the top of the heap, with a self image and confidence that reflects their position on the ladder.

Out at Footscray, the question is whether our self image reflects our ladder position too.

Ten months ago, after the 2007 home and away season, having missed the finals by a few games and with a giant chasm of form, the self image of the Dogs was at an all-time low. We have worked day and night in the weeks and months since to realign the HMAS Bulldogs.

Is that enough time for the reality to sink in to our skin and skulls, to convince ourselves that we are capable of toppling The Beatles in Liverpool? Only time will tell, but it should be a game of highly skilled and positive football.

To me, both teams play a style of the game that seems orchestrated by players who probably don't fill up their tanks when the lights come on.