Buttons

The things you can remember when you are quiet and listening to your inner thoughts can often make you smile. Especially when you really need a smile.

Recently while mulling over all the rubble in my mind and trying to decide what was scrap and needed forgotten or pushed out of my immediate thoughts and what was important and needed dealt with and the things that were in between, I recalled a memory from childhood.

Wonder why those things slip in when you least expect them...

When my aunt and I were still little children (back in the stone age when dinosaurs still roamed the earth according to the thoughts of my grandchildren) my grandmother would hide a button somewhere in the house. Our task was to find it.

Now grandma had tons of buttons in her sewing and mending supplies. Buttons of almost every imaginable color. Buttons of many different sizes. Many plain buttons and some very ornate looking buttons. She would usually pick out one of the more ornate buttons to hide for our game.

She would put the button in her pocket or hand and while she was walking around the house doing her work, she would hide it. Then after walking around some more she would yell out, button, button who lost the button.

That would sent my aunt and I scurrying around the house in search of the button.

While she was still busy doing her work we spent many hours searching for the button. Many rainy days and cold blustery days we were kept busy hunting the button.

Grandma was no dummy. She knew this would keep us busy and keep us out of her hair and from complaining about being bored...

As I seem to recall she never did hide the button in a really hard place to find, but when you consider all the small hiding places in a house it can take some time to find a darned button on a windowsill behind a curtain. She never hid the buttons higher than we could see which kept us from climbing and getting hurt.

Looking back on that game I learned so many years ago, I realize how much it helps me today.

I have seemed to have developed this ability to hide things from myself almost every day. Like glasses I take off to see things close. Like the TV remote which I swear has legs of it's own and uses them to run and hide when there is something dumb or boring on TV.

Like even a full cup of coffee which I'm carrying to the living room to enjoy while I sit and take a break. Somehow I manage to get sidetracked along the way and then have to spend enough time finding it that when I do the coffee is cold. And that's all just when I'm in the house. You really don't want to hear about the stuff I lose outside! I mean there are acres that can be covered with a good search for the dumb stuff I can lose!

So ya see, I've taken grandma's game to a whole new level. Now I hide things from myself and still need to have the patience to launch and carry out a proper search.

Hmm, wonder if grandma was being sly and really intending to teach me a lesson to help out in old age...