The Button Collection
Tags: Babies, Health, Humor, Life, Coronavirus

The Button Collection

Hallway buttons, 1987

My older brother had a button collection. The 11-year-old me thought his buttons were really cool and funny (Woodstock Peace and Music…“TGIF unless YOOS” — ‘you’re out of Schlitz’ … and “Keep your temper, nobody else wants it.”) and when he left them after going to college, I moved them into my room. There was one that I just stared at, but couldn’t figure out: All it said in tiny letters was PBPGINFWMY. Regardless, I took them all.

If anyone asked, I’d say I had a button collection.

In my teens I purchased a funny button here and there, but mostly people GAVE me buttons, because now they had the perfect gift for this kid. My mom would go to book publishing conferences and return with all sorts of marketing objects, including buttons.

College was a radical source of new material: the Brown University band was well-known for the Ivy League-insulting buttons they’d release at each football game. “Chew Big Red” (for the Cornell game) or, my favorite, “12” and “14” buttons — for the Harvard game the year that Brown got 14 stars in the Fiske Guide to Colleges, and Harvard got 12. The band buttons doubled the size of my collection.

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Every few years I could add political buttons — my sister had the “Nixon” and “McGovern ‘72” buttons in her room, and probably where I got the “Take the Chisolm Trail to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.” When I created my book Defending the Galaxy, I produced two buttons — “If I don’t defend the galaxy, who will?” and “I’m a video virgin” — I wasn’t sure what I’d do with them, but I wanted buttons.

One family thanksgiving in the ‘90s I was talking to my brother and I mentioned his button collection.

“What are you talking about?” he said.

I was confused. “Your button collection? The funny buttons you had on your bulletin board?”

“I didn’t have a button collection. I think I had a few buttons and I pinned them up, and I didn’t even think of them when I moved out of the house. I certainly didn’t have a button collection.”

Of course he didn’t. I sat in silence for a moment. He didn’t have a collection, but I did. I wonder how often someone finds inspiration and motivation from this kind of mistaken belief.

It took until 2004 before someone was looking at the buttons on my bulletin board and pointed at the PBPGINFWMY button and laughed.

“You recognize that button??” I said, in amazement.

“Yes, it’s from my church.”

“What’s it mean?”

“Please be patient, God is not finished with me yet.”