“Maybe my ploy had worked. I wore a respectable shirt that buttoned down the front, only - whoops! – I must have forgotten to fasten the button over my cleavage. No respectable girl would wear her shirt open that low. (Cough.)”

“She pushed the car. But I was so distracted that i forgot to push the button on the timer, so we had to do the whole thing again. Which Lindsey found hilarious. "Ok" she said. "Are you ready NOW, or do we have to send you back to Button Pushing one-oh-one?" "Um, what's Button Pushing One-oh-one?" I was wearing a button down shirt that day. Lindsey reached out and poked one of the buttons into my chest. "There, that's how you push a button. Any questions?”

“My heart was a little bit broken, but I still had to go to school. I buttoned my dress shirt over it and my winter coat, too. I hoped it didn't show too much.”

“He was the kind of guy that made a woman want to rip his shirt open and watch the buttons scatter along with her inhibitions.”

“(Regarding a twenty-questions game:)Did you know that the Russian composer Aram Katchaturian described his ‘Sabre Dance’ as no more than a button on the shirt on the body of his work? No? You’re not alone. Suppose my twenty-questions answer was that metaphorical button — would that be fair?”

“Buttoning the length of my shirt with Left Neglect and one right hand takes the same kind of singular, intricate, held-breath concentration that I imagine someone trying to dismantle a bomb would need to have.”