Tag: buttons

Button Sunday

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.

Button Sunday

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!

Button Sunday

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.

Button Sunday

I found this button a while back in some of my mother’s belongings. I could be wrong, but I’m reasonably sure my mother never voted for Richard Nixon and only had it because she liked to collect political buttons. This one is from the 1972 campaign and was distributed by the Committee to Re-Elect the President, later known as CREEP. Most of the committee’s members landed in legal trouble and even prison for criminal activities relating to the election, including a little action known as Watergate.

Houston is coming up on an election of its own. Though I’m being driven nearly mad by political phone calls, this button is a reminder that it’s good to be mindful of where my vote goes.

Button Sunday

Some thoughts on secrets:

  • In a favorite novel I read when I was young, a favorite character told her niece, “Never tell anyone everything.” I have always followed this advice.
  • Though I have a tendency to share information about friends with other friends, I can and do keep secrets if I am asked.
  • There are some secrets I will not keep, but I always warn people what these are if I sense they are about to confide something to me.
  • Sometimes the secrets sent to postsecret.com make me cry.
  • I have sent three secrets to postsecret.com. I don’t think they were published, and they weren’t all that startling anyway.
  • There are secrets I wish I’d never shared with certain people. Remembering that helps me better keep secrets now.
  • I think a person with no secrets may have lived a dull life. Go get yourself some secrets! Not all secrets are bad, after all.
  • Right or wrong, I think there’s a reasonable expectation that most people will tell their spouse/partner/significant other most of the secrets they are told.
  • I have been stunned by secrets that came to light after someone died.
  • If you write your deepest secrets down, you’re begging for trouble.
  • Some people I trust with secrets because I know they won’t tell. Others I trust with secrets because I know they’ll forget them.
  • People are not as bad as their secrets make them think they are. They’re just human.

Thanks, Marika, for another post-inspiring button.

Button Sunday


It’s funny how trying to figure out the way a button came into my collection leads me to all kinds of information on the Internet. Virtual detecting!

I’m sure I just liked what this one said: “I’ve been to REALITY,” so I grabbed it, probably from a desk or office I inherited in the distant past. Research has led me to believe it’s a promotional button for a business simulation software based on Mark H. McCormack’s 1987 book What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School. I researched McCormack and learned that he was the first to realize the large sums of money athletes could make from endorsements; he founded International Management Group (now IMG). From Wikipedia:

In 1960, after realizing the potential of sports in the television age, McCormack…signed golfer Arnold Palmer as IMG’s first client. Palmer, who had become golf’s dominant superstar, was soon followed to IMG by rising stars Jack Nicklaus and then Gary Player. McCormack aggressively promoted the so-called Big Three of golf during the 1960s, raising their incomes dramatically, while building IMG’s business.

Some of McCormack’s later clients included Björn Borg, Chris Evert, Pete Sampras, Michael Schumacher, Derek Jeter, Charles Barkley, Kate Moss, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pope John Paul II, and Tiger Woods. By the time McCormack died in 2003, IMG had branched not only into other areas of celebrity management, but into venues, events, and media. You can read a fascinating account of how a little boy with an injury that kept him out of contact sports became a Forbes-listed millionaire, prolific author, and sports/entertainment industry titan here.

Damn. McCormack, IMG, and client Tyra Banks made a ton of money, and all I got was this lousy button.