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Ignition
Let me tell you about a formative experience from my childhood; about the button.
Who knows why I was going through the kitchen drawers, maybe I was looking for a utensil, maybe I was bored, maybe I was looking for buried treasure and hadn't come to the conclusion that the kitchen was newer than I was, who knows. In one drawer along with the plastic freezer bags and wire ties I found it; the button.
The button was maybe two inches across and an inch high, it wasn't the sort of button that you used to button up your coat it was more the sort of button you used for launching space shuttles. It was a big red button and it was just sitting there in the kitchen drawer.
I lifted the button out and looked at the underside. A thin base of black rubber meant it would stay put on any worktop in the kitchen. I figured there was room inside for a battery and maybe a circuit or maybe some sort of remote sensor; it was afterall a big red button.
I turned it over and had a good look at it. The shell was solid white plastic and the base a black rubber disk, the actual button to depress was in bright red and concave, with a tiny black dot at the lowest point. I could not improve upon my earlier conclusion, it was a big red button.
And big red buttons are made to be pushed, it is their very raison d'être. Buttons themselves are somewhat optional. Switches and sliders and dials and whatnot can be left alone, but a big red button. Let me say that again... a big... red... button, simply must be pushed.
So I put the button down on the worktop and pushed the big red button with my thumb. And I received a sharp stabbing metal spike in the pad of my thumb where the eggshell-piercing point came through the tiny black dot.
And what did I learn? I learned that sometimes big red buttons shouldn't be blindly pushed unless you know what its going to do.
Jul. 8.2006