For adults, buttons are necessary amenities. Who ever thinks about a button unless it is missing. And then thoughts are only of a quick replacement. For adults, button boxes are about as exciting as the contents themselves.
This collection starts as buttons are cut from worn garments discarded to the rag bag. Next come a few that turn up in the washing machine. Then there's the lone button left on a card of new buttons purchased to complete a dress in the making. It doesn't take long to assemble a button box.
But just think. When was the last time you looked through a button box. That's right. It was the last time you need to replace a button. More than likely, the perfect button wasn't there either. Rather you settled for "something that would do."
However, to a child, buttons are the things that games are made of and a button box holds magic. Remember "button, button, who's got the button?"
Every child holds his clasped hands together ready to receive the ever elusive button. Can the hand truly be faster than the eye?
And remember "Rich. man, poor man, beggar man, thief,
Doctor, lawyer, merchant chief."
Today's girls probably use the chant to foretell their own occupations rather than that of prospective husbands. But if you listen close enough, some youngster will count off the buttons with just such a chant.
Have you ever watched a preschooler, equipped with needle and thread, string rows and rows of buttons.? The fascination of pushing needles through the hole in a button will catch his attention and hold it for long moments.
Buttons make marvelous substitutes for missing checkers or other store-bought game pieces.But if you want to see magic at hand, just give a youngster a box full of buttons. (One word of caution, wait until he knows better than to try to eat them.) First off, he dumps them on the floor and runs them through his fingers like a miser fondles coins. He feels and examines each one. He may sort them into piles of reds and greens and whites and blacks.
This one looks like a star and that one looks like a general's medal. And if you place the buttons just so, you can make a face, or a cat, or the letter B. The possibilities of what a button can be or make is limited only by his imagination. And, therein lies the magic.
So the next time you pop a button, look at it, not for what it is; but for what it can be. And in doing so, you may just catch a glimpse of that childhood you once knew.
1976
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