An Aries (Who Knows Some Stuff)
Last week, Lynne and I were talking about Miss Piggy. Then on Saturday, she texted me this photo of a button she’d found in her collection. It was released as part of a Hallmark series circa 1980.
Miss Piggy for First Lady…President!
Today is officially Miss Piggy Day on this blog. More to come…
In my previous post, I mentioned a button on my dorm room bulletin board. This is that button.
It’s old. So old that people still cared about using apostrophes to indicate letters missing from a word.
The existence of this button reassures me that this situation is not unique to Tom and me. If we ever get our PCs, iMac, Nooks, and Adobe to all get along, we may throw a party.
Also, if there’s any doubt about who’s who, I’d like to point out that this button contains a comma splice.
All the best to each of you in the coming year!
The children were nestled with bows on their heads…
But I heard them exclaim as they took to their beds….
Also: Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
Helen, who I know through Tim, sent me this photo of a button that she says has “a political statement close to [her] heart.” Mine, too, Helen. Mine, too.
Thanks, Miss Harris, Mrs. Griffin, Mrs. Norton, Mrs. Adair, Mrs. Couch, Mrs. Lester, Klaus Duncan, Toni Niblett, Mike Craton, Joene Bedwell, Billie Bryan, Sandra Rhodes, Helen Jones, Arlina Jones, Gary Sanford, Mike Fincher, Sheila McElroy, Culpepper Clarke, Don Noble, Phil Beidler, Jewel Hudgens, Henry Jacobs, Dwight Eddins, Virginia Foscue, Gerald Globetti, Pat Herman, Neal Lineback, Francoise De Rocher.
I can’t believe I’ve been doing Button Sundays for more than five years. About two–maybe three–years ago, Lynne brought over a box of buttons. At first I thought she was giving them to me, then I realized she was loaning them to me for use in future Button Sunday posts. I promptly put the box of buttons away and forgot about them. She probably has added “button thief” to “Tupperware thief” and “sock thief” on her list of my vices. So I finally photographed them all, will share them over time, and now I can return them to her.
Maybe.
Here’s the debut from what I have of her collection:
This one reminds me of trips we made to Six Flags with Lynne’s church youth group when we were youngsters. On one of those trips, a boy a couple of years older began flirting with me. A year or so later, he became the first person my mother (my father was overseas) let me go on an official double date with because he seemed like a nice, young gentleman.
For my younger readers, let me tell you what I learned from him.
BOYS CAN BE MUCH WORSE GOSSIPS THAN GIRLS.
I have no idea what it meant to “ring the bell” at Six Flags, but all these many years later, I could still cheerfully wring that blabbermouth’s neck.
This button came to me sometime during the 1970s or 1980s. I could have purchased it myself. In subsequent years, I’ve come to think of it as the Lynne button, because come every December, she sings that annoying “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” song. In fact, almost every Christmas, I give her a hippopotamus of one kind or another, most of which I’m sure she no longer has. I guess that’s why she always ends up wanting another one.
This button is the work of cartoonist and author Sandra Boynton. I’m not sure there’s anyone in the United States who hasn’t given or received one of her greeting cards.
Even hippos.
This was included among my mother’s buttons. I went to Disney World one year, and I may have gotten it for her, but then why wouldn’t I have gotten one for myself, as well? Because in my collection, what I have is this:
I’m not even sure I got that from Disney World. Someone else could have given it to me.
As I was photographing buttons and thinking about this post, I could hear one or both of my parents using the phrase, “What kind of Mickey Mouse outfit is this?” Naturally, I had to seek out the origin. From Google Answers, the earliest recorded use of “Mickey Mouse” in a negative context was among jazz musicians in the 1930s, for whom the phrase meant inferior music such as that used for dance bands (comparing it to cartoon music). Other sources say that soldiers used it in World War II to describe absurd Army routines (certainly a place my father could have heard it), and some say it originated as a result of the shoddy workmanship of imported Mickey Mouse watches.
Random: Both my mother and I, at different times, had Mickey Mouse watches.
Mine (top) Hers (bottom)–Both well worn.
As a child, I was never as infatuated with Mickey Mouse as by this guy, on another button in my collection:
Mighty Mouse is on his way!
Many of us have bad habits when writing. Back in the 90s, when there was such a thing as a chat room online, I think it was a Halloween night when all the room regulars decided to chat in disguise (virtual costumes, if you will). Within minutes of my arrival under my new secret name, someone identified me. When I asked how he knew, he said, “It’s all those ellipses. You love your three dots.”
I broke the ellipses habit. But I’ll never–ever–get over the damn em dash.
Once again, thanks, Marika, for the button.