Last weekend I watched my aunt button up her granddaughter's coat. When she got to the bottom she realized that she had misaligned the buttons and had to start over. My parents stood by watching this and Dad called out to my young cousin, "Uh oh, Grandma buttoned your nerd button." My face lit up beside him.
"Nerd button! I had forgotten all about the nerd button!" My father looked a little shocked.
"How could you have forgotten the nerd button?"
Family lore and legend. There is so much of it that as you travel along on the journey you drop bits. It's like trying to carry a large load of socks to the washing machine; your arms are so full, you loose a stray every now and then. Finding them again is discovering little bits of yourself that you had forgotten you ever lost.
Did your family talk of nerd buttons? Did my folks pick that up from a book or a film? To be honest, I don't know. It may be authentic Byrne family lore handed down through the generations. And then again it may be something Dad made up. All I know is that you never button up the top button on a shirt. You'll turn into a nerd. It's true. It's the nerd button. It's as true as how swallowing watermelon seeds will sprout watermelons out your ears. It's why all cats are called woobies and how if you sleep with your socks on you'll catch your death of pneumonia. Don't ask me to explain these things. They are law. Like gravity, relativity, and that ever present Murphy's law, they govern our existence.
I remember once Shawn and I were making artichokes for dinner. Before putting them in the pot, he took them over to the cutting board and cut off the very tops. My mother always did that too, I realized. I asked him why. He looked at the knife like he hadn't realized he had picked it up. "I don't know. That's what my mom always did." This curiosity sparked phone calls to our respective mothers who both reported that they cut off the tops because their moms did. Know what I think? I think that most artichokes were too tall to sit in those old, standard, copper-bottomed pots everyone used to have so people got accustomed to chopping the tops off and their children's children's children still do it without question. My pots are rather tall, but I still do it. That's just the way it's done.
I bought some English muffins for this weekend's ski trip and then due to a change in cast I realized I had way too many.
"What are we going to do with all these extra muffins?" Shawn asked.
We spoke of toasting them with peanut butter or various other breakfast renditions. Then I smiled.
"Tuna fish," I said.
That's what you do with English muffins, you see. You put put tuna fish on them and a slice of cheese and then you heat it up in the toaster oven. I had forgotten that. I bet I haven't had that since right after I left home for college. I closed my eyes and saw black olives peaked out through the melted cheese and I could smell the burning cheese that dripped down to the bottom of the toaster oven.
"Olives," I said. "We're going to need sliced black olives."
"There are some kalamata olives in the door of the fridge," Shawn said.
I looked shocked and reproachful.
"Okay..." he said cautiously. "I guess we'll get some sliced black olives."
That's just how you eat tuna fish on an english muffin, you see. This is law.
In truth, it does not matter how far back the legend of the nerd button goes. As my little cousin Rosalee looked at my dad with wide eyes over the collar of her rebuttoned coat, I realized that this bit of family lore was being passed on to yet another generation. I made a mental note not to forget the nerd button again. I have to pass it on to my kids.
Couldn't have them turning into nerds, after all.