the shirt
My mom saves a lot of stuff from when I was little. I’ve gotten stuffed animals, report cards, even a lock of hair from when I was very little, from her.
One Valentine’s Day I received a box from her containing a card, some VDay candy, a toddler-size polo shirt, and a little cardboard box containing a button with a Post-It that read,”The button”.
This button is proof that my occasional tendency to not fully think things through dates back to toddler years. Click below for the full (hopefully unembelished) story.
It must have been 1980 or81 — I was somewhere between 3 and 5 years old. At that time, I would attend daycare at the Seminary where my dad taught, on days when there was no school or for the few hours after school and before my parents were able to come home to watch me.
So, I was at daycare and it was naptime. We children were in this room, trying to go to sleep. I must have been fiddling with the button on my polo shirt, because it suddenly came off. As I recall, this was a serious conundrum.
- I needed to not lose the button. In my mind it was imperative that I not lose this button
- I did not have any pockets in which to put the button. I vaguely remember thinking, “Oooh, pocket! Oh no! I’m wearing the cuordoroy pants with no pockets!”
- I thought about contacting one of the daycare staff, but I didn’t want to wake them. Cause obviously if all the children were taking naptime, the staff must be too, right?
size comparison
So what was I to do? I didn’t think I could trust myself to fall asleep just holding it in my hand — I’d probably drop it, I figured. I couldn’t set it aside, cause I didn’t know that I would remember when I woke up. Briefly I toyed with the idea of just staying awake, but really I was kind of tired.
I’m not 100% positive on this, but I seem to recall contemplating storing it in my cheek; but rejecting the idea based on the fact I might swallow it. In any event, I was certainly thinking along those lines because it suddenly struck me: I could store this button in my nose.
So I made a test run, I put the button into my nostril very slightly, then quick tried to get it out. *phew!* I could get the button out of my nose. So I put it in again, slightly farther up this time.
I tried blowing as hard as I could, it didn’t come out. I was happy, the button was safe and I could sleep. I still had another nostril to breathe out of, so I was good to go.
One more time I verified that I could get the button out. This time I could not.
I was pretty much screwed at this point. Everyone was asleep, my parents were elsewhere, and I had a button up my nose. The only thing I could do was go ahead and take my nap.
That night I told my parents about this incident. They took me to a doctor. This doctor was unable to retrive the wayward button. He may even have been unable to locate it, for all I know.
Would you like to know what he suggested?
To paraphrase, “Wait for it to come out the other end.”
I feel bad for my mom. She had to visit the bathroom after me for at least a day, maybe more. After all, they needed to verify the button actually did come out the other end and didn’t get lodged somewhere. To be absolutely clear, my mom was digging through my poo for at least a day. I can’t imagine how awful that must have been — I can only hope I wasn’t that regular at the time, and that this wasn’t something like a thrice-daily event.
In any case, fortune smiled upon her in the end. Lo and behold, one fine evening she did, in fact, locate my button.
the button
This is the button that made the Fantastic Voyage
