Buttons

Last week when I went to JoAnns to buy my ill-fated crocheting supplies I stopped by the button aisle and picked up a few to add to my teeny collection. 

I have two plans for buttons.  One involves the handkerchiefs I’ve been amassing and another one involves buttons on a MUCH grander scale.  A project I have in mind that I want to keep secret until I can unveil it here to the gasps and murmurs of "now why didn’t I think of doing that with buttons…"

My problem isn’t with my smaller project.  I can hand select each button I need depending on the colors in the handkerchiefs.  The bigger project is a whole other issue.  I need lots of buttons.  I’ve tried buying them on e-Bay but what happens is I see someone has a large collection they are selling and I make my bid.  And at the last minute someone always outbids me by a penny.  It’s vexing, let me tell you.

I rarely bid on anything on e-Bay.  I’m more an instant gratification, buy it now kind of a buyer.  I can’t play the bidding games because I’m too much of a ‘everyone play nice and all get along’ pollyanna type of a person.  I could never swoop in at the last second and outbid someone by mere cents because I don’t like how it makes me feel when it happens to me. 

I’d never make it in the cut-throat world of sales or corporate hi-jinks would I? 

What I’m not beneath doing is sneaking into closets and snipping off the occasional button off a shirt or jacket. 

Here’s a funny story about buttons.  I don’t mean to pick on people in sales because I’m sure there are plenty of nice, honest ones.  This story, however, involves a not very nice one that my friend was involved with.  She and this person, her partner of some years were in the process of an unpleasant break-up.  She was struggling with a new catering business and he was in a very high powered sales position.  They had a new baby together and they were trying to negotiate monthly child support. 

This man would think nothing of dropping $75 on a pair of socks or $300 on a tie.  He had a dozen suits hanging in his closet with hand made shirts to go with them.  Yet he was balking at child support and would only agree to pay something like $150 a month in child support.   This miserable man would threaten to bring up things from my friends past so he could get custody of the baby if she didn’t agree to his paltry offer.   She was no match for him and finally just agreed to his terms in order to put an end to it.

But the night before he was to move out she snuck into his closet and snipped the threads on every single button on every single shirt and every single suit he had.  Didn’t cut them off, oh no.  Just snipped a bit so that eventually they would all fall off.

I should give him a call.  He might have some buttons for sale.