Friday, January 30, 2009
Latest Reports Indicate Economy Is Getting Worse in the US
Taken together, the three reports released by the government painted a picture of an economy that continued to slide as falling consumer spending and rising unemployment amplified the effects of a yearlong recession.
The Commerce Department reported that American businesses ordered fewer durable goods like computers, construction equipment and vehicles in December, cutting the prospects for growth as companies braced for a difficult 2009.
Orders of durable goods fell 2.6 percent last month, to $176.8 billion. It was the fifth consecutive month of declines, after a 3.7 percent drop in November as the country slipped deeper into a recession now nearly 13 months old.
Excluding transportation, new orders of durable goods orders fell 3.6 percent. Excluding orders for military equipment, durable goods fell 4.9 percent.
For all of 2008, orders fell 5.7 percent, a decline topped only by a 10.7 percent drop in 2001.
“This is pretty much what you expect when the economy is in the process of shrinking and businesses don’t see any need to purchase any capital goods,” said Bernard Baumohl, managing director of the Economic Outlook Group. “Even if you did want to increase your capital investments, it’s going to be difficult to get the capital to purchase this.”
Orders for computers and electronic goods dropped by 7.2 percent in December, and factory orders for metals, machinery, transportation equipment and communications equipment slumped as businesses cut their outlooks.
Shipment of goods also fell for a fifth month, declining 0.7 percent.
“The data show clear declines in sectors as diverse as cars, computers, metals and machinery,” Ian C. Shepherdson, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a note. “The industrial recession is deep and broad, and there’s no prospect of any easing of the downward pressure anytime soon.”
As businesses struggled, the problems of the housing market continued to multiply. The Commerce Department reported that sales of new single-family homes in December fell 14.7 percent to an annual rate of 331,000, a record low.
In all, 482,000 new homes were sold last year as housing prices tumbled and credit dried up. That figure was 37.8 percent lower than the 776,000 homes sold a year earlier.
Also on Thursday, the Labor Department reported that first-time unemployment claims rose to a seasonally adjusted 588,000 for the week that ended Jan. 24, up 3,000 from a revised 585,000 for the week before.
Employers had long resisted making mass layoffs as the economy cooled, seeking instead to cut costs through shorter work weeks, pay cuts and hiring freezes, but they are now cutting jobs by the thousands.
The national unemployment rate has risen to 7.2 percent since the economy slipped into recession last December, and the jobless rates in Michigan and Rhode Island have already reached 10 percent. Some economists expect that the national unemployment rate will rise to 9 percent before the economy gets back on track.
Via:
www.nytimes.com
Steep Slide in U.S. Economy, but Not as Dire as Forecast
The gross domestic product — a crucial measure of economic performance — shrank at an annual rate of 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. Although the contraction was significantly better than the 5.5 percent decline that economists had expected, it raised the possibility that the economy had not yet hit bottom.
Rising inventories helped propped up the overall number because the government counts them as growth. The final sales figure for the fourth quarter, which excludes inventories, fell 5.1 percent in the last three months of 2008.
Employers their investments in computers, office equipment, machinery and other capital goods by an annualized 19.1 percent in the fourth quarter to reduce costs.
Trade fell, as Americans bought fewer Asian-made televisions and computers, and global demand for American goods and services ebbed. Exports in the fourth quarter declined 19.7 percent while imports dropped 15.7 percent.
And American consumers, who took on home equity loans and large amounts of credit card debt to finance their lifestyles earlier in the decade, curtailed their spending for a second consecutive quarter. Consumer spending, which typically accounts for two-thirds of the economic growth fell 3.5 percent in the quarter, after decreasing 3.8 percent in the third quarter.
With no end in sight to the downturn, the stark numbers on Friday are likely to intensify the debate over an enormous stimulus plan moving through Congress.
“The fact that you’re not seeing any evidence that things are turning for the better has added quite a bit to the urgency to get things done and do something substantial,” said Michael E. Feroli, a United States economist at JPMorgan Chase.
The House, divided along partisan lines, passed an $819 billion package of tax cuts and spending on Wednesday, and the Senate is to begin debating its version of the package on Monday. President Obama and most Democrats support the plan, but not a single Republican has voted for it.
While many economists say the stimulus is crucial to replace a paucity of private spending and investment, they are concerned that the tax cuts in the Democratic plan will not be particularly useful, and that more effective spending proposals will take too long to put in place.
“It’s badly needed, and as quickly as possible,” said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight. “You’d like to be able to inject a huge amount of stimulus very quickly, but how practically can that be done? Practically speaking, you can’t spend the money that fast.”
The pace of contraction in the fourth quarter was the steepest since 1982, when the economy shrank at an annual rate of 6.4 percent in the first three months of the year after the Carter administration limited bank borrowing as a means of strangling inflation.
But it may be more difficult to pull the country out of this recession than the downturn of the 1980s, when the Federal Reserve helped stimulated growth by slashing interest rates. In December, the Fed cut its target overnight rates to a record low near zero percent, exhausting one of its key weapons.
“They’re running out of options,” said Ann L. Owen, associate professor at Hamilton College and a former Fed economist. “They’ve got the Fed funds rate down to basically zero. They’re talking about buying Treasuries. It’s not really clear what kind of effect they can have on the economy.”
Although the recession officially began 13 months ago, as the housing market soured and energy prices pinched consumers, the gross domestic product continued to grow slowly in 2008 until the third quarter, when it contracted at an annual rate of 0.5 percent.
The turmoil in the last three months of the year reflected widespread havoc in the economy. Housing prices fell at their fastest pace on record, credit markets dried up and billions of dollars’ worth of bad mortgage debt threatened the stability of the country’s largest financial institutions.
Because of their losses, many banks pulled back on lending, and even healthy ones tightened lending standards for those who still had a stomach to borrow.
Businesses reeled from falling sales and dim prospects for growth. Employers like Microsoft, Starbucks, Sprint and Home Depot have cut thousands of jobs as they prepare for a difficult year. Unemployment now stands at 7.2 percent, and some economists said that jobless rates could hit 9 percent as the recession spreads like an oil slick.
“It’s a severe contraction,” said Mickey Levy, chief economist at Bank of America. “No sector of the economy is safe right now.”
Via:
www.nytimes.com
Steep Slide in U.S. Economy, but Not as Dire as Forecast
Army sees sharp rise in suicide rate
At least 128 Army soldiers took their own lives last year -- an estimated suicide rate of 20.2 per 100,000, a sharp increase from the 2007 rate of 16.8.
It marked the first time the Army rate has exceeded the national suicide rate for the corresponding population group -- 19.5 per 100,000 -- since the Pentagon began systematically tracking suicides nearly 30 years ago.
The 2008 figure does not include 15 additional deaths under investigation that officials suspect were suicides.
Also Thursday, Marine Corps officials revised their suicide numbers upward, reporting a rate of 19.0 per 100,000 in 2008, the highest for the Marines since 1995.
"Why do the numbers keep going up? We cannot tell you," Army Secretary Pete Geren said.
Army officials believe that contributing factors include emotional and psychological stress caused by repeated combat deployments, along with the toll that the tours have taken on marriages.
About a third of suicides occur during deployments abroad, a third after deployments and a third among soldiers who never deploy.
"We all come to the table believing stress is a factor," said Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the Army's vice chief of staff.
Between 2003 and 2007, the Pentagon frequently extended combat tours and barred soldiers from leaving at the end of their enlistment.
In 2007, it extended all Army deployments abroad to 15 months, from 12.
The blanket extension ended last year, and units beginning new tours now will serve only a year. However, some units assigned 15-month tours must complete them before the longer deployments end later this year.
Dr. Judith Broder, founder of the Soldier's Project, a counseling service for troops and their families in the Los Angeles area, said the repeated deployments caused some soldiers and Marines to lose faith in religion or themselves. Some become suicidal after abusing drugs or alcohol and they lose rational judgment.
"They become extremely depressed and really hopeless, like, 'This is never going to end. I'm never going to be myself again. I'm never going to be able to be with my family again,' " she said.
Jose Coll, chairman of the Military Social Work Program at USC, also blamed frequent and lengthy deployments. "And when the soldier comes back, it's not like he's on vacation. He comes back to training, and that creates a lot of stress for the family," said Coll, who served in the Marine Corps.
Army officials said they realized that longer tours would increase strains on soldiers and their families, and they attempted to head off problems by increasing the money they spent on assistance programs to $1.5 billion, from $700 million.
"We could feel the pressure families and soldiers were under," Geren said.
The Army and Defense Department stepped up mental health screening and hired more mental health professionals. The military also devoted more resources to treating post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries -- battlefield wounds that have compounded stress on soldiers and their families.
Still, some say those efforts -- particularly the mental health screening -- have been inadequate.
"Until the Department of Defense starts taking aggressive action, the suicide crisis will get worse," said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense. "We are looking at the tip of an iceberg of a social catastrophe unless the military and VA start fighting stigma and start getting help for the veteran."
Cindy Williams, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is an expert on military personnel systems, said that reporting a mental health infirmity cut against the ethos of the Army.
"In the Army, there is a culture that says you don't get sick," she said. "Even if the Army wants to change the culture, it is hard for a soldier to go to a supervisor and say, 'I am thinking suicidal thoughts.' "
In November, a Marine safety board called for bolstering suicide prevention efforts by improving training for officers and by incorporating anti- suicide training into the martial arts program.
In the Army, Geren said he had placed Chiarelli at the head of a new effort to reduce suicides.
As a first step, the Army will begin training soldiers in how to identify people who may be at risk of suicide and how to get help.
"We obviously haven't turned this around yet," said Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the Army's top behavioral health expert. "This really has to be a national effort where everyone is reaching out to soldiers and their families."
Last year, the Army announced a five-year initiative with the National Institute of Mental Health to study military suicides and ways to prevent them.
The Army reported that in 2008, 31 suicides occurred in Iraq and seven in Afghanistan. There are far fewer U.S. troops in Afghanistan than in Iraq.
The Marine Corps this week reported that 41 Marines had committed suicide in 2008, for a rate of 19 per 100,000 troops, the highest rate since 1995 when it was slightly under 20 per 100,000. Among the 41 Marine suicides, six were in Iraq. The Marine Corps had said that the rate for 2008 was 16.8 per 100,000, only marginally higher than the 2007 rate of 16.5. But officials said that figure was incorrect because of a computational error.
Via:
www.latimes.com
Army sees sharp rise in suicide rate
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
President Barack Obama's inauguration speech
"My fellow citizens:
I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.
Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.
So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.
That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.
These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.
Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met.
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.
On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom.
For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.
For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.
For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.
Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.
This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do."
Via:
www.reuters.comPresident Barack Obama's inauguration speech
Friday, January 16, 2009
Heroes tribute odd addition to comedy website
Politics might make for strange bedfellows, but the digital entertainment business is capable of pairing some unusual bunkmates in its own right.
Just look at the newest tenant at budding Internet empire Or Die Networks, home to Funny Or Die, Will Ferrell's comedy dot-com. The company is branching out into new fields, each with celebrity poster boys attached to their corresponding sites, including skateboard guru Tony Hawk for action-sports hub Shred Or Die and video game god Fatal1ty for gamer haven Pwn Or Die.
But they are no comparison to the surprise attending the latest addition to the Or Die world. In November, the site quietly added GreatAmericans.com (http://www.greatamericans.com) to its suite. It is billed as a home for "positive role models," particularly men and women in uniform, from our armed forces abroad to the cops or firemen in local neighborhoods. It's a strange fit to say the least to see such high-minded content among the snark and sass that pervades the rest of Or Die Networks.
But if GreatAmericans.com is an unlikely addition to the Or Die family, its charter member might strike an even odder presence. Creator and executive producer Matt Daniels introduces himself on the site's home page in a video in which he is seen descending a subway escalator in a rough section of Harlem, an area where he grew up poor. He tells us he might never have survived were it not for role models in his life, thus inspiring a website that serves as a showcase for other heroes.
But what Daniels doesn't mention, nor does the press release that announced the site's launch, is his claim to fame. Five years ago, Daniels was a leading opponent of legalizing gay marriage and even authored a proposed constitutional amendment banning the practice. As founder of Alliance for Marriage, he emerged as a high-profile figure in the conservative movement one election cycle before the gay-marriage issue exploded again in the form of the controversial Proposition 8 in California.
In an interview, Daniels indicates that he no longer is with AFM and his new enterprise is unrelated to his previous claim to fame.
"Anybody looking at the portal and what is actually being promoted, what is actually being celebrated, can make their own judgment on the face of what we represent, and we'll stand by that," Daniels says. "This is an utterly and completely different venture."
As Daniels attests, there is nothing overtly ideological about GreatAmericans.com. Still, having Daniels in the Or Die camp is paradoxical given his new associates. Not only did Funny Or Die recently stage a star-studded mock musical salute to overturning Prop. 8 featuring Jack Black, John C. Reilly and Neil Patrick Harris, but the company's investors include HBO, which has long been a bastion of gay-friendly programing.
In the politically charged atmosphere of the post-election period, what exactly is the statute of limitations on someone who was so publicly on record in opposition to same-sex marriage, even if their new affiliation has nothing to do with their stance in that arena? Think of the recent furors attending Barack Obama's selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration or the Los Angeles Film Festival's decision to let go of its director, Richard Raddon, for donating to an organization supporting Prop 8.
Or Die Networks CEO Dick Glover does not see Daniels' background, of which he was aware, as relevant.
"One of the very big issues, and it was very extensively discussed, is that this site is not a political site," he says. "Political views don't matter if it's not a business issue."
What's also interesting about GreatAmericans.com is that Daniels was inspired to create it because he takes a dim view of what constitutes most of mainstream entertainment. "We have plenty of people doing 'Spider-Man 3' or 'Batman 4,'" he says. "But what about the real heroes of our day?"
But even a cursory look reveals that the intent of the site doesn't quite jibe with the reality of how people are using it. There are some heartwarming stories to be viewed on soldiers who overcame insurmountable odds, but the most popular videos are the equivalent of combat porn: scenes of battleground violence devoid of any context that reinforces its stated intent of offering portraits of courage or heroism. Whether it was Daniels' intent or not, the site is catering to some of the same bottom-feeding impulses of the mainstream entertainment to which he wants to establish an alternative.
Daniels doesn't quite see it that way.
"It's the reality of risking your life for your country and what that really looks like and sounds like, which in some cases is astonishing," he says.
Via:
http://uk.reuters.comHeroes tribute odd addition to comedy website
Financial crisis ate your job? Try MySpace
MySpace, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's international media conglomerate News Corp, told Reuters that its jobs site has seen a big rise in traffic during the past year -- particularly after the onset of the financial meltdown.
In the past year, traffic has risen threefold, said Angela Courtin, senior vice president of marketing, entertainment and content at MySpace.
The number of unique users visiting the jobs site rose to more than 160,000 in November 2008 from about 83,500 in the same period a year ago, according to numbers that MySpace provided to Reuters on Thursday. The site has not seen spikes like that before, Courtin said.
The average number of minutes per user rose to seven in November from one in the same period last year.
The appeal appears to centre on the old saying that misery loves company. Seeking job opportunities is something that often depends on relationships as well as scouring job boards -- and sites like MySpace and LinkedIn provide both.
MySpace is not the only one. LinkedIn late last year saw membership jump to 31 million from 18 million at the beginning of 2008 as people used the business networking site to seek connections for jobs that are increasingly harder to come by.
The privately held LinkedIn said it got 25 percent more registrations last fall than it had forecast.
Via:
http://uk.reuters.com
Financial crisis ate your job? Try MySpace
Monday, January 12, 2009
Cadillac One - Obama's Presidential Car
Click on the picture to enlarge it!
Via:
http://cache.gawker.com
Cadillac One - Obama's Presidential Car
Sunday, January 11, 2009
The History of Videogame on an animation film version
A Short Visual History of Videogames from Kyle Downes on Vimeo.
The History of Videogame on an animation film version
Friday, January 9, 2009
Chris Chike is Guitar Hero's Hero
THE sounds were coming from the basement: a rapid, staccato clicking of plastic against plastic, hundreds of times a minute, too quick and orderly to be described as a rattle and too rhythmic to be considered noise.
In the downstairs den of his family’s home, Chris Chike was sitting in an easy chair with a toy guitar across his lap. While his eyes were trained on a big-screen television inches away, his hands were frantically working the bruised plastic instrument held together with masking tape. His left hand was tapping manically at five colored buttons on the guitar’s neck, while his right hand made graceful leaps between the neck and a large black button on the guitar’s body, where a real musician would be strumming at strings.
His movements were precisely choreographed to the action on his television set, where color-coded musical notes stampeded down the neck of a simulated guitar in time to a relentlessly bombastic heavy-metal ballad called “Through the Fire and Flames.” Some 1,191 notes would whiz by before Chris missed a single one.
This is the now-familiar ritual of Guitar Hero, the video game series that lets players (and spectators) replicate the adrenaline rush of a rock-music concert as rec-room Eric Claptons and Pete Townshends press buttons in time to popular songs, scoring points as they show off their hand-and-eye coordination if not actual musicianship.
If Chris were not otherwise occupied, he could tell you that he is, by several objective measures, the most talented Guitar Hero player in existence: not only good enough to have attained numerous high-score records, but so skilled that he has parlayed his peculiar blend of athleticism and showmanship into online celebrity and a fledgling career designing and endorsing his own line of video game hardware. But at the moment, another barrage of notes was about to descend on him. “The chaos,” he said, “begins right now.”
Despite his preternatural dexterity, Chris, would seem to be just one more avid gamer who has helped make the Guitar Hero franchise a towering success. It has sold more than 20.7 million copies worldwide since its debut just three years ago.
Yet to the video game business Chris represents just the kind of player — the freakishly talented one-man spectacle — who could bring more revenue and legitimacy to the industry, and prove once and for all that video gaming is as much a mainstream American pastime as going to the movies or watching television.
“A lot of people still have this perception of gamers being spotty 13-year-olds stuck in their bedrooms,” said Keith Pullin, the editor of the gamers’ edition of the Guinness World Records book, which recently declared Chris the best Guitar Hero player on the planet. “But Chris is a great example of how you can be a wholesome person and still be good at games at the same time.” All of which can be a little overwhelming to a soft-spoken young man who’s still not sure how he wants to define himself.
“When a new person will come around,” Chris said, “my friends will be like, ‘Hey, did you know this is the No. 1 kid in the world at Guitar Hero?’ And I’m like —— ” He hid his head in his hands. “That’s not what I want to first tell people when I meet them.”
In his daily life Chris is a senior at the nearby Century High School; he is 6 foot 2, boyishly handsome, a soccer player, a long and high jumper on the varsity track team and painfully shy in conversation, particularly about his plans for college. “I don’t really like to think about it,” he said in a pregame interview, “because I like to procrastinate.”
But to millions of Internet users he is better known as iamchris4life, the Guitar Hero wunderkind whose astronomical scores and YouTube videos of his gaming exploits are, to these fans, as thrilling as actually playing the game. In messages sent to Chris’s account on the Xbox Live network and in notes posted on his personal YouTube page they declare their devotion: “yer god.” “do u wanna marry me?”
The youngest of four siblings, Chris has owned almost every home video game console since the 1990s-era Super Nintendo (all bestowed on him by his father, Anthony, 52, who runs a computer business, and his mother, Claudia Knowlton-Chike, 50, a general manager for GE Healthcare).
In recent years Chris became particularly adept at rhythm-based games like Dance Dance Revolution, in which players step on a special mat in time to onscreen arrows, and he began posting videos of his dance moves on YouTube. (At his mother’s request he videotaped himself from his shoulders down.)
He also breezed through the hardest levels of the original Guitar Hero, released in 2005 for PlayStation 2, and its 2006 sequel, Guitar Hero II. When he posted screen shots of his accomplishments at Web sites like scorehero.com, he noticed his scores were significantly higher than his closest competitors.
His unusual ascent was occurring at a time when the video game industry was discovering the potential of social games — which like Guitar Hero are meant to be played in groups and can be as much fun to watch as to participate in — to reach a previously untapped audience.
“It’s just like karaoke, right?” said Kai Huang, the president and co-founder of RedOctane, the division of the game company Activision Publishing that releases Guitar Hero. “People don’t have to be the best singer in the world, but they just love getting up onstage and performing.”
Every Guitar Hero needs a nemesis, and Chris found his in a song called “Through the Fire and Flames,” a track that appears in the game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Performed by the British power-metal band Dragonforce, “Through the Fire and Flames” (or simply “TTFaF” to die-hard gamers) is a brutal tour de force of finger-tapping, consisting of 3,722 notes over seven and a half minutes. The song is available only to players who have completed all the other tracks in the game, and they are not expected to master it so much as simply to survive it.
“It’s what we would consider the pinnacle of difficulty,” Mr. Huang said. “The guitar shredding in there is just insane.”
Over a period of weeks and months Chris practiced the song in the family den, surrounded by walls decorated with his mother’s homemade Western shirts, family photographs and a picture of his maternal grandparents with President Bush. He completed the song to 96 percent accuracy, then 98 percent, but kept falling just short of perfection.
Then, late on the night of June 3, with his $80 video camera recording him for posterity, Chris played the song flawlessly. His hands still trembling, he shouted a few expletives and raced to upload his footage on YouTube, where the online world had already been tipped off to his accomplishment when his astonishing score was automatically uploaded to an Xbox Live leader board. Within a few hours, Chris estimates, the video of his perfect “TTFaF” performance had been viewed more than 10,000 times; it has since been watched more than 2.1 million times — a particularly astounding tally for what is essentially a video of someone pressing buttons.
By now the legend of iamchris4life was widespread. In March he was invited by Guinness World Records to visit New York and play “TTFaF” for a live crowd, which he did with 97 percent accuracy. (“I was kind of disappointed that I couldn’t do my best,” Chris said.)
This event, in turn, caught the attention of the Ant Commandos, makers of video game hardware in Ontario, Calif., which struck an agreement (negotiated by Ms. Knowlton-Chike) for Chris to be its public face. He now lends his gaming expertise to design sessions for a forthcoming line of Guitar Hero controllers, and his café au lait looks — he is the son of a white mother and a black father — to advertisements and packaging for Ant Commandos products.
“Internally we call him our Tiger Woods,” said Raymond Yow, the company’s chief operating officer.
Another name frequently invoked in connection with Chris is Tony Hawk, the skateboarding pioneer who parlayed his abilities into a multimillion-dollar empire of endorsed products, performance tours and, yes, video games, bringing the once-unfamiliar category of action sports with him into the spotlight.
The American video game scene sorely lags behind other nations’ in generating and appreciating personalities who would be the field’s equivalent of Mr. Hawk. In South Korea, for example, the top players of strategy games like StarCraft are regarded as rock stars, with entire television channels dedicated to covering their tournaments and competitions.
But American gaming culture may be approaching its own turning point. “We need that lightning-in-a bottle moment,” said Michael Arzt, a former marketing executive for the Gravity Games, an action-sports event, who is now the general manager of International Cyber Marketing, which runs a worldwide video game competition called the World Cyber Games.
Mr. Arzt said American gaming needed the equivalents of Mr. Hawk’s 900-degree skateboard spin at the 1999 Summer X Games, or Carey Hart’s motorcycle back flip at the 2000 Gravity Games, to break through as a truly mainstream sport.
“We’re not there yet, but it’s starting to happen,” Mr. Arzt said. “The video gamers are getting a little more savvy.”
Chris would sooner die a thousand deaths than discuss, say, the many Advanced Placement courses he will be taking this fall, or his score on the ACT. But put a fake guitar in his hands, and he becomes a different, dynamic person. Watching his Guitar Hero sessions, on video or in person, you can easily be hypnotized by the synchronized movements of his fingers as they bounce upon the diminutive plastic fretboard. He is clearly not making music with the instrument, but his performance is a feat of coordination in its own right.
And he is learning to add occasional flourishes to his act: tapping out the grueling solo to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” while he looks at the ceiling, or holding his guitar controller behind his back, just to prove he’s memorized it. (“Some things never leave your mind,” Chris explained.)
While Ms. Knowlton-Chike serves as her son’s agent and business manager, she said she trusted Chris to decide for himself which events and opportunities he will participate in. “He makes good choices,” she said. “There were nights when I used to go downstairs and say, ‘Hey, turn the game off and go to bed.’ But he knows how to manage himself.”
For example, she said, Chris agreed to appear at a gaming event in October in Amsterdam only after finding out that it would not conflict with his school schedule.
He is also sorely tempted to buy himself a full-size Dance Dance Revolution arcade machine, which would cost several thousand dollars. “We’re learning to pay for things when we have the money,” Ms. Knowlton-Chike said.
Chris is hopeful that his endorsed line of Guitar Hero controllers (scheduled for release later this year) will sell well. But he is also concerned about balancing his senior-year schoolwork and the time he spends with his friends, who he said were perhaps not as scholastically motivated.
“They’re like, ‘Yeah, senior year’s the easiest because you can slack off,’ ” Chris said. “That can’t be my case.”
Having demonstrated his prowess at Guitar Hero, Chris switched over to another music game called Rock Band, which lets gamers play drums in addition to guitar. He sat down behind a small plastic drum kit and proceeded to pound out an immaculate recreation of Keith Moon’s percussion from the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” improvising a few embellishments to the solos.
Despite the display he had just given, Chris said he wouldn’t make a good musician. “I think I probably could if I tried,” he said. “But I’m not the rock punk type. I’m not a drummer boy. I just play video games.”
Via:
www.nytimes.com
Chris Chike is Guitar Hero's Hero
Labelle dials down the flamboyance (slightly) for first tour since '70s
Labelle broke up in 1977, leaving behind a legacy of genre-bending boldness that influenced everything from disco to new wave, and can still be heard in the work of artists such as Santogold, Christina Aguilera and Prince. Now they’re back with their first album in three decades, “Back to Now” (Verve), and a reunion tour that brings them to the Chicago Theatre on Saturday.
Dash says the group has toned down some of its futuristic flamboyance in favor of a more refined “upscale” look. Gone are the days of space-invader wings, bucket-shaped hairstyles and stack heels.
“We wanted to do something age appropriate,” says the 63-year-old singer with a laugh. “I won’t be wearing the silver bra and waist band. But it’s going to look good, and we learned from doing the Apollo (a performance in New York a few weeks ago) that the people were there to hear us.”
After the group splintered, LaBelle established a powerhouse solo career, Hendryx worked with Talking Heads, Prince and Peter Gabriel while buffing up her reputation as one of R&B’s most consistently provocative songwriters, and Dash added her trademark harmonies to disco hits and the Rolling Stones alike. The group did one-off reunions over the years, and the pace picked up when Hendryx wrote a tribute to civil-rights pioneer Rosa Parks, “Dear Rosa,” a few years ago.
The trio got together in the studio to record the song, and found their trademark vocal blend remained as spirited as ever.
“Patti called me afterward and said, ‘Did you hear the playback?’ ” Dash says. “We still had our sound.”
LaBelle, Hendryx and Dash put their own money on the line to begin recording an album. Hendryx enlisted Lenny Kravitz to produce the first few tracks. “He walked in just after we got done recording our demonstration vocals, listened to the playback of ‘Superlover’ and said, ‘Man, I’m in.’ ”
Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, the famed Philadelphia soul producers, pitched in on a few tracks, and will.i.am added dubious modern production touches (including Auto-Tune vocal modulations) to “Rollout.” One thing will.i.am got right was recording LaBelle, Hendryx and Dash harmonizing together while sitting on the couch in the recording studio. Among the album’s surprises is a remixed live version of Cole Porter’s “Miss Otis Regrets,” recorded on the group’s first tour in 1970 with the Who’s Keith Moon on drums.
“One day we heard it on YouTube,” Dash says. “The fans found it first and loved it. It was a time when we were working on new songs and new sounds, with Patti kicking and screaming the whole way, worried that our fans were gonna forget about us. It’s a song that shows we were definitely ahead of our time.”
Hendryx contributed a half-dozen tracks to the new album, though Dash and LaBelle rejected a few. “They were great songs … for someone in their twenties,” Dash says of a few of Hendryx’s more explicit contributions. “But she has the ability to move past that and try something else. We recorded enough music to start a second CD if we decide to go that way.”
Dash says the group dynamic has changed, with each singer established in solo ventures and each having her own manager. “Naturally, there are egos,” she says.
LaBelle is clearly first among equals in the group because of her solo success, but Dash says “she’s very conscious of our image and sound. It feels like we have a leader, and that is good. Diva-ism can be described in many ways, but I would not say that’s what we’re looking at. She’s a star, but we’re all different degrees of stars who recognize that the group has to come first.”
Via:
http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.comLabelle dials down the flamboyance (slightly) for first tour since '70s
Thursday, January 8, 2009
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - The Original Short Story by Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
1
As long ago as 1860 it was the proper thing to be born at home. At
present, so I am told, the high gods of medicine have decreed that the
first cries of the young shall be uttered upon the anaesthetic air of
a hospital, preferably a fashionable one. So young Mr. and Mrs. Roger
Button were fifty years ahead of style when they decided, one day in
the summer of 1860, that their first baby should be born in a
hospital. Whether this anachronism had any bearing upon the
astonishing history I am about to set down will never be known.
I shall tell you what occurred, and let you judge for yourself.
The Roger Buttons held an enviable position, both social and
financial, in Antebellum Baltimore. They were related to the This
Family and the That Family, which, as every Southerner knew, entitled
them to membership in that enormous peerage which largely populated
the Confederacy. This was their first experience with the charming old
custom of having babies--Mr. Button was naturally nervous. He hoped it
would be a boy so that he could be sent to Yale College in
Connecticut, at which institution Mr. Button himself had been known
for four years by the somewhat obvious nickname of "Cuff."
On the September morning consecrated to the enormous event he arose
nervously at six o'clock dressed himself, adjusted an impeccable
stock, and hurried forth through the streets of Baltimore to the
hospital, to determine whether the darkness of the night had borne in
new life upon its bosom.
When he was approximately a hundred yards from the Maryland Private
Hospital for Ladies and Gentlemen he saw Doctor Keene, the family
physician, descending the front steps, rubbing his hands together with
a washing movement--as all doctors are required to do by the unwritten
ethics of their profession.
Mr. Roger Button, the president of Roger Button & Co., Wholesale
Hardware, began to run toward Doctor Keene with much less dignity than
was expected from a Southern gentleman of that picturesque period.
"Doctor Keene!" he called. "Oh, Doctor Keene!"
The doctor heard him, faced around, and stood waiting, a curious
expression settling on his harsh, medicinal face as Mr. Button drew
near.
"What happened?" demanded Mr. Button, as he came up in a gasping rush.
"What was it? How is she" A boy? Who is it? What---"
"Talk sense!" said Doctor Keene sharply, He appeared somewhat
irritated.
"Is the child born?" begged Mr. Button.
Doctor Keene frowned. "Why, yes, I suppose so--after a fashion." Again
he threw a curious glance at Mr. Button.
"Is my wife all right?"
"Yes."
"Is it a boy or a girl?"
"Here now!" cried Doctor Keene in a perfect passion of irritation,"
I'll ask you to go and see for yourself. Outrageous!" He snapped the
last word out in almost one syllable, then he turned away muttering:
"Do you imagine a case like this will help my professional reputation?
One more would ruin me--ruin anybody."
"What's the matter?" demanded Mr. Button appalled. "Triplets?"
"No, not triplets!" answered the doctor cuttingly. "What's more, you
can go and see for yourself. And get another doctor. I brought you
into the world, young man, and I've been physician to your family for
forty years, but I'm through with you! I don't want to see you or any
of your relatives ever again! Good-bye!"
Then he turned sharply, and without another word climbed into his
phaeton, which was waiting at the curbstone, and drove severely away.
Mr. Button stood there upon the sidewalk, stupefied and trembling from
head to foot. What horrible mishap had occurred? He had suddenly lost
all desire to go into the Maryland Private Hospital for Ladies and
Gentlemen--it was with the greatest difficulty that, a moment later,
he forced himself to mount the steps and enter the front door.
A nurse was sitting behind a desk in the opaque gloom of the hall.
Swallowing his shame, Mr. Button approached her.
"Good-morning," she remarked, looking up at him pleasantly.
"Good-morning. I--I am Mr. Button."
At this a look of utter terror spread itself over girl's face. She
rose to her feet and seemed about to fly from the hall, restraining
herself only with the most apparent difficulty.
"I want to see my child," said Mr. Button.
The nurse gave a little scream. "Oh--of course!" she cried
hysterically. "Upstairs. Right upstairs. Go--up!"
She pointed the direction, and Mr. Button, bathed in cool
perspiration, turned falteringly, and began to mount to the second
floor. In the upper hall he addressed another nurse who approached
him, basin in hand. "I'm Mr. Button," he managed to articulate. "I
want to see my----"
Clank! The basin clattered to the floor and rolled in the direction of
the stairs. Clank! Clank! I began a methodical decent as if sharing in
the general terror which this gentleman provoked.
"I want to see my child!" Mr. Button almost shrieked. He was on the
verge of collapse.
Clank! The basin reached the first floor. The nurse regained control
of herself, and threw Mr. Button a look of hearty contempt.
"All right, Mr. Button," she agreed in a hushed voice. "Very
well! But if you knew what a state it's put us all in this
morning! It's perfectly outrageous! The hospital will never have
a ghost of a reputation after----"
"Hurry!" he cried hoarsely. "I can't stand this!"
"Come this way, then, Mr. Button."
He dragged himself after her. At the end of a long hall they reached a
room from which proceeded a variety of howls--indeed, a room which, in
later parlance, would have been known as the "crying-room." They
entered.
"Well," gasped Mr. Button, "which is mine?"
"There!" said the nurse.
Mr. Button's eyes followed her pointing finger, and this is what he
saw. Wrapped in a voluminous white blanket, and partly crammed into
one of the cribs, there sat an old man apparently about seventy years
of age. His sparse hair was almost white, and from his chin dripped a
long smoke-colored beard, which waved absurdly back and forth, fanned
by the breeze coming in at the window. He looked up at Mr. Button with
dim, faded eyes in which lurked a puzzled question.
"Am I mad?" thundered Mr. Button, his terror resolving into rage. "Is
this some ghastly hospital joke?
"It doesn't seem like a joke to us," replied the nurse severely. "And
I don't know whether you're mad or not--but that is most certainly
your child."
The cool perspiration redoubled on Mr. Button's forehead. He closed
his eyes, and then, opening them, looked again. There was no
mistake--he was gazing at a man of threescore and ten--a baby
of threescore and ten, a baby whose feet hung over the sides of the
crib in which it was reposing.
The old man looked placidly from one to the other for a moment, and
then suddenly spoke in a cracked and ancient voice. "Are you my
father?" he demanded.
Mr. Button and the nurse started violently.
"Because if you are," went on the old man querulously, "I wish you'd
get me out of this place--or, at least, get them to put a comfortable
rocker in here,"
"Where in God's name did you come from? Who are you?" burst out Mr.
Button frantically.
"I can't tell you exactly who I am," replied the querulous
whine, "because I've only been born a few hours--but my last name is
certainly Button."
"You lie! You're an impostor!"
The old man turned wearily to the nurse. "Nice way to welcome a
new-born child," he complained in a weak voice. "Tell him he's wrong,
why don't you?"
"You're wrong. Mr. Button," said the nurse severely. "This is your
child, and you'll have to make the best of it. We're going to ask you
to take him home with you as soon as possible-some time to-day."
"Home?" repeated Mr. Button incredulously.
"Yes, we can't have him here. We really can't, you know?"
"I'm right glad of it," whined the old man. "This is a fine place to
keep a youngster of quiet tastes. With all this yelling and howling, I
haven't been able to get a wink of sleep. I asked for something to
eat"--here his voice rose to a shrill note of protest--"and they
brought me a bottle of milk!"
Mr. Button, sank down upon a chair near his son and concealed his face
in his hands. "My heavens!" he murmured, in an ecstasy of horror.
"What will people say? What must I do?"
"You'll have to take him home," insisted the nurse--"immediately!"
A grotesque picture formed itself with dreadful clarity before the
eyes of the tortured man--a picture of himself walking through the
crowded streets of the city with this appalling apparition stalking by
his side.
"I can't. I can't," he moaned.
People would stop to speak to him, and what was he going to say? He
would have to introduce this--this septuagenarian: "This is my son,
born early this morning." And then the old man would gather his
blanket around him and they would plod on, past the bustling stores,
the slave market--for a dark instant Mr. Button wished passionately
that his son was black--past the luxurious houses of the residential
district, past the home for the aged....
"Come! Pull yourself together," commanded the nurse.
"See here," the old man announced suddenly, "if you think I'm going to
walk home in this blanket, you're entirely mistaken."
"Babies always have blankets."
With a malicious crackle the old man held up a small white swaddling
garment. "Look!" he quavered. "This is what they had ready for
me."
"Babies always wear those," said the nurse primly.
"Well," said the old man, "this baby's not going to wear anything in
about two minutes. This blanket itches. They might at least have given
me a sheet."
"Keep it on! Keep it on!" said Mr. Button hurriedly. He turned to the
nurse. "What'll I do?"
"Go down town and buy your son some clothes."
Mr. Button's son's voice followed him down into the: hall: "And a
cane, father. I want to have a cane."
Mr. Button banged the outer door savagely....
2
"Good-morning," Mr. Button said nervously, to the clerk in the
Chesapeake Dry Goods Company. "I want to buy some clothes for my
child."
"How old is your child, sir?"
"About six hours," answered Mr. Button, without due consideration.
"Babies' supply department in the rear."
"Why, I don't think--I'm not sure that's what I want. It's--he's an
unusually large-size child. Exceptionally--ah large."
"They have the largest child's sizes."
"Where is the boys' department?" inquired Mr. Button, shifting his
ground desperately. He felt that the clerk must surely scent his
shameful secret.
"Right here."
"Well----" He hesitated. The notion of dressing his son in men's
clothes was repugnant to him. If, say, he could only find a very large
boy's suit, he might cut off that long and awful beard, dye the white
hair brown, and thus manage to conceal the worst, and to retain
something of his own self-respect--not to mention his position in
Baltimore society.
But a frantic inspection of the boys' department revealed no suits to
fit the new-born Button. He blamed the store, of course---in such
cases it is the thing to blame the store.
"How old did you say that boy of yours was?" demanded the clerk
curiously.
"He's--sixteen."
"Oh, I beg your pardon. I thought you said six hours. You'll
find the youths' department in the next aisle."
Mr. Button turned miserably away. Then he stopped, brightened, and
pointed his finger toward a dressed dummy in the window display.
"There!" he exclaimed. "I'll take that suit, out there on the dummy."
The clerk stared. "Why," he protested, "that's not a child's suit. At
least it is, but it's for fancy dress. You could wear it
yourself!"
"Wrap it up," insisted his customer nervously. "That's what I want."
The astonished clerk obeyed.
Back at the hospital Mr. Button entered the nursery and almost threw
the package at his son. "Here's your clothes," he snapped out.
The old man untied the package and viewed the contents with a
quizzical eye.
"They look sort of funny to me," he complained, "I don't want to be
made a monkey of--"
"You've made a monkey of me!" retorted Mr. Button fiercely. "Never you
mind how funny you look. Put them on--or I'll--or I'll spank
you." He swallowed uneasily at the penultimate word, feeling
nevertheless that it was the proper thing to say.
"All right, father"--this with a grotesque simulation of filial
respect--"you've lived longer; you know best. Just as you say."
As before, the sound of the word "father" caused Mr. Button to start
violently.
"And hurry."
"I'm hurrying, father."
When his son was dressed Mr. Button regarded him with depression. The
costume consisted of dotted socks, pink pants, and a belted blouse
with a wide white collar. Over the latter waved the long whitish
beard, drooping almost to the waist. The effect was not good.
"Wait!"
Mr. Button seized a hospital shears and with three quick snaps
amputated a large section of the beard. But even with this improvement
the ensemble fell far short of perfection. The remaining brush of
scraggly hair, the watery eyes, the ancient teeth, seemed oddly out of
tone with the gaiety of the costume. Mr. Button, however, was
obdurate--he held out his hand. "Come along!" he said sternly.
His son took the hand trustingly. "What are you going to call me,
dad?" he quavered as they walked from the nursery--"just 'baby' for a
while? till you think of a better name?"
Mr. Button grunted. "I don't know," he answered harshly. "I think
we'll call you Methuselah."
3
Even after the new addition to the Button family had had his hair cut
short and then dyed to a sparse unnatural black, had had his face
shaved so dose that it glistened, and had been attired in small-boy
clothes made to order by a flabbergasted tailor, it was impossible for
Button to ignore the fact that his son was a excuse for a first family
baby. Despite his aged stoop, Benjamin Button--for it was by this name
they called him instead of by the appropriate but invidious
Methuselah--was five feet eight inches tall. His clothes did not
conceal this, nor did the clipping and dyeing of his eyebrows disguise
the fact that the eyes under--were faded and watery and tired. In
fact, the baby-nurse who had been engaged in advance left the house
after one look, in a state of considerable indignation.
But Mr. Button persisted in his unwavering purpose. Benjamin was a
baby, and a baby he should remain. At first he declared that if
Benjamin didn't like warm milk he could go without food altogether,
but he was finally prevailed upon to allow his son bread and butter,
and even oatmeal by way of a compromise. One day he brought home a
rattle and, giving it to Benjamin, insisted in no uncertain terms that
he should "play with it," whereupon the old man took it with--a weary
expression and could be heard jingling it obediently at intervals
throughout the day.
There can be no doubt, though, that the rattle bored him, and that he
found other and more soothing amusements when he was left alone. For
instance, Mr. Button discovered one day that during the preceding week
be had smoked more cigars than ever before--a phenomenon, which was
explained a few days later when, entering the nursery unexpectedly, he
found the room full of faint blue haze and Benjamin, with a guilty
expression on his face, trying to conceal the butt of a dark Havana.
This, of course, called for a severe spanking, but Mr. Button found
that he could not bring himself to administer it. He merely warned his
son that he would "stunt his growth."
Nevertheless he persisted in his attitude. He brought home lead
soldiers, he brought toy trains, he brought large pleasant animals
made of cotton, and, to perfect the illusion which he was
creating--for himself at least--he passionately demanded of the clerk
in the toy-store whether "the paint would come oft the pink duck if
the baby put it in his mouth." But, despite all his father's efforts,
Benjamin refused to be interested. He would steal down the back stairs
and return to the nursery with a volume of the Encyclopedia
Britannica, over which he would pore through an afternoon, while his
cotton cows and his Noah's ark were left neglected on the floor.
Against such a stubbornness Mr. Button's efforts were of little avail.
The sensation created in Baltimore was, at first, prodigious. What the
mishap would have cost the Buttons and their kinsfolk socially cannot
be determined, for the outbreak of the Civil War drew the city's
attention to other things. A few people who were unfailingly polite
racked their brains for compliments to give to the parents--and
finally hit upon the ingenious device of declaring that the baby
resembled his grandfather, a fact which, due to the standard state of
decay common to all men of seventy, could not be denied. Mr. and Mrs.
Roger Button were not pleased, and Benjamin's grandfather was
furiously insulted.
Benjamin, once he left the hospital, took life as he found it. Several
small boys were brought to see him, and he spent a stiff-jointed
afternoon trying to work up an interest in tops and marbles--he even
managed, quite accidentally, to break a kitchen window with a stone
from a sling shot, a feat which secretly delighted his father.
Thereafter Benjamin contrived to break something every day, but he did
these things only because they were expected of him, and because he
was by nature obliging.
When his grandfather's initial antagonism wore off, Benjamin and that
gentleman took enormous pleasure in one another's company. They would
sit for hours, these two, so far apart in age and experience, and,
like old cronies, discuss with tireless monotony the slow events of
the day. Benjamin felt more at ease in his grandfather's presence than
in his parents'--they seemed always somewhat in awe of him and,
despite the dictatorial authority they exercised over him, frequently
addressed him as "Mr."
He was as puzzled as any one else at the apparently advanced age of
his mind and body at birth. He read up on it in the medical journal,
but found that no such case had been previously recorded. At his
father's urging he made an honest attempt to play with other boys, and
frequently he joined in the milder games--football shook him up too
much, and he feared that in case of a fracture his ancient bones would
refuse to knit.
When he was five he was sent to kindergarten, where he initiated into
the art of pasting green paper on orange paper, of weaving colored
maps and manufacturing eternal cardboard necklaces. He was inclined to
drowse off to sleep in the middle of these tasks, a habit which both
irritated and frightened his young teacher. To his relief she
complained to his parents, and he was removed from the school. The
Roger Buttons told their friends that they felt he was too young.
By the time he was twelve years old his parents had grown used to him.
Indeed, so strong is the force of custom that they no longer felt that
he was different from any other child--except when some curious
anomaly reminded them of the fact. But one day a few weeks after his
twelfth birthday, while looking in the mirror, Benjamin made, or
thought he made, an astonishing discovery. Did his eyes deceive him,
or had his hair turned in the dozen years of his life from white to
iron-gray under its concealing dye? Was the network of wrinkles on his
face becoming less pronounced? Was his skin healthier and firmer, with
even a touch of ruddy winter color? He could not tell. He knew that
he no longer stooped, and that his physical condition had improved
since the early days of his life.
"Can it be----?" he thought to himself, or, rather, scarcely dared to
think.
He went to his father. "I am grown," he announced determinedly. "I
want to put on long trousers."
His father hesitated. "Well," he said finally, "I don't know. Fourteen
is the age for putting on long trousers--and you are only twelve."
"But you'll have to admit," protested Benjamin, "that I'm big for my
age."
His father looked at him with illusory speculation. "Oh, I'm not so
sure of that," he said. "I was as big as you when I was twelve."
This was not true-it was all part of Roger Button's silent agreement
with himself to believe in his son's normality.
Finally a compromise was reached. Benjamin was to continue to dye his
hair. He was to make a better attempt to play with boys of his own
age. He was not to wear his spectacles or carry a cane in the street.
In return for these concessions he was allowed his first suit of long
trousers....
4
Of the life of Benjamin Button between his twelfth and twenty-first
year I intend to say little. Suffice to record that they were years of
normal ungrowth. When Benjamin was eighteen he was erect as a man of
fifty; he had more hair and it was of a dark gray; his step was firm,
his voice had lost its cracked quaver and descended to a healthy
baritone. So his father sent him up to Connecticut to take
examinations for entrance to Yale College. Benjamin passed his
examination and became a member of the freshman class.
On the third day following his matriculation he received a
notification from Mr. Hart, the college registrar, to call at his
office and arrange his schedule. Benjamin, glancing in the mirror,
decided that his hair needed a new application of its brown dye, but
an anxious inspection of his bureau drawer disclosed that the dye
bottle was not there. Then he remembered--he had emptied it the day
before and thrown it away.
He was in a dilemma. He was due at the registrar's in five minutes.
There seemed to be no help for it--he must go as he was. He did.
"Good-morning," said the registrar politely. "You've come to inquire
about your son."
"Why, as a matter of fact, my name's Button----" began Benjamin, but
Mr. Hart cut him off.
"I'm very glad to meet you, Mr. Button. I'm expecting your son here
any minute."
"That's me!" burst out Benjamin. "I'm a freshman."
"What!"
"I'm a freshman."
"Surely you're joking."
"Not at all."
The registrar frowned and glanced at a card before him. "Why, I have
Mr. Benjamin Button's age down here as eighteen."
"That's my age," asserted Benjamin, flushing slightly.
The registrar eyed him wearily. "Now surely, Mr. Button, you don't
expect me to believe that."
Benjamin smiled wearily. "I am eighteen," he repeated.
The registrar pointed sternly to the door. "Get out," he said. "Get
out of college and get out of town. You are a dangerous lunatic."
"I am eighteen."
Mr. Hart opened the door. "The idea!" he shouted. "A man of your age
trying to enter here as a freshman. Eighteen years old, are you? Well,
I'll give you eighteen minutes to get out of town."
Benjamin Button walked with dignity from the room, and half a dozen
undergraduates, who were waiting in the hall, followed him curiously
with their eyes. When he had gone a little way he turned around, faced
the infuriated registrar, who was still standing in the door-way, and
repeated in a firm voice: "I am eighteen years old."
To a chorus of titters which went up from the group of undergraduates,
Benjamin walked away.
But he was not fated to escape so easily. On his melancholy walk to
the railroad station he found that he was being followed by a group,
then by a swarm, and finally by a dense mass of undergraduates. The
word had gone around that a lunatic had passed the entrance
examinations for Yale and attempted to palm himself off as a youth of
eighteen. A fever of excitement permeated the college. Men ran hatless
out of classes, the football team abandoned its practice and joined
the mob, professors' wives with bonnets awry and bustles out of
position, ran shouting after the procession, from which proceeded a
continual succession of remarks aimed at the tender sensibilities of
Benjamin Button.
"He must be the wandering Jew!"
"He ought to go to prep school at his age!"
"Look at the infant prodigy!" "He thought this was the old men's
home."
"Go up to Harvard!"
Benjamin increased his gait, and soon he was running. He would show
them! He would go to Harvard, and then they would regret these
ill-considered taunts!
Safely on board the train for Baltimore, he put his head from the
window. "You'll regret this!" he shouted.
"Ha-ha!" the undergraduates laughed. "Ha-ha-ha!" It was the biggest
mistake that Yale College had ever made....
5
In 1880 Benjamin Button was twenty years old, and he signalized his
birthday by going to work for his father in Roger Button & Co.,
Wholesale Hardware. It was in that same year that he began "going out
socially"--that is, his father insisted on taking him to several
fashionable dances. Roger Button was now fifty, and he and his son
were more and more companionable--in fact, since Benjamin had ceased
to dye his hair (which was still grayish) they appeared about the same
age, and could have passed for brothers.
One night in August they got into the phaeton attired in their
full-dress suits and drove out to a dance at the Shevlins' country
house, situated just outside of Baltimore. It was a gorgeous evening.
A full moon drenched the road to the lusterless color of platinum,
and late-blooming harvest flowers breathed into the motionless air
aromas that were like low, half-heard laughter. The open country,
carpeted for rods around with bright wheat, was translucent as in the
day. It was almost impossible not to be affected by the sheer beauty
of the sky--almost.
"There's a great future in the dry-goods business," Roger Button was
saying. He was not a spiritual man--his aesthetic sense was
rudimentary.
"Old fellows like me can't learn new tricks," he observed profoundly.
"It's you youngsters with energy and vitality that have the great
future before you."
Far up the road the lights of the Shevlins' country house drifted into
view, and presently there was a sighing sound that crept persistently
toward them--it might have been the fine plaint of violins or the
rustle of the silver wheat under the moon.
They pulled up behind a handsome brougham whose passengers were
disembarking at the door. A lady got out, then an elderly gentleman,
then another young lady, beautiful as sin. Benjamin started; an almost
chemical change seemed to dissolve and recompose the very elements of
his body. A rigor passed over him, blood rose into his cheeks, his
forehead, and there was a steady thumping in his ears. It was first
love.
The girl was slender and frail, with hair that was ashen under the
moon and honey-colored under the sputtering gas-lamps of the porch.
Over her shoulders was thrown a Spanish mantilla of softest yellow,
butterflied in black; her feet were glittering buttons at the hem of
her bustled dress.
Roger Button leaned over to his son. "That," he said, "is young
Hildegarde Moncrief, the daughter of General Moncrief."
Benjamin nodded coldly. "Pretty little thing," he said indifferently.
But when the Negro boy had led the buggy away, he added: "Dad, you
might introduce me to her."
They approached a group, of which Miss Moncrief was the center. Reared
in the old tradition, she curtsied low before Benjamin. Yes, he might
have a dance. He thanked her and walked away--staggered away.
The interval until the time for his turn should arrive dragged itself
out interminably. He stood close to the wall, silent, inscrutable,
watching with murderous eyes the young bloods of Baltimore as they
eddied around Hildegarde Moncrief, passionate admiration in their
faces. How obnoxious they seemed to Benjamin; how intolerably rosy!
Their curling brown whiskers aroused in him a feeling equivalent to
indigestion.
But when his own time came, and he drifted with her out upon the
changing floor to the music of the latest waltz from Paris, his
jealousies and anxieties melted from him like a mantle of snow. Blind
with enchantment, he felt that life was just beginning.
"You and your brother got here just as we did, didn't you?" asked
Hildegarde, looking up at him with eyes that were like bright blue
enamel.
Benjamin hesitated. If she took him for his father's brother, would it
be best to enlighten her? He remembered his experience at Yale, so he
decided against it. It would be rude to contradict a lady; it would be
criminal to mar this exquisite occasion with the grotesque story of
his origin. Later, perhaps. So he nodded, smiled, listened, was happy.
"I like men of your age," Hildegarde told him. "Young boys are so
idiotic. They tell me how much champagne they drink at college, and
how much money they lose playing cards. Men of your age know how to
appreciate women."
Benjamin felt himself on the verge of a proposal--with an effort he
choked back the impulse. "You're just the romantic age," she
continued--"fifty. Twenty-five is too wordly-wise; thirty is apt to be
pale from overwork; forty is the age of long stories that take a whole
cigar to tell; sixty is--oh, sixty is too near seventy; but fifty is
the mellow age. I love fifty."
Fifty seemed to Benjamin a glorious age. He longed passionately to be
fifty.
"I've always said," went on Hildegarde, "that I'd rather marry a man
of fifty and be taken care of than many a man of thirty and take care
of him."
For Benjamin the rest of the evening was bathed in a honey-colored
mist. Hildegarde gave him two more dances, and they discovered that
they were marvelously in accord on all the questions of the day. She
was to go driving with him on the following Sunday, and then they
would discuss all these questions further.
Going home in the phaeton just before the crack of dawn, when the
first bees were humming and the fading moon glimmered in the cool dew,
Benjamin knew vaguely that his father was discussing wholesale
hardware.
".... And what do you think should merit our biggest attention after
hammers and nails?" the elder Button was saying.
"Love," replied Benjamin absent-mindedly.
"Lugs?" exclaimed Roger Button, "Why, I've just covered the question
of lugs."
Benjamin regarded him with dazed eyes just as the eastern sky was
suddenly cracked with light, and an oriole yawned piercingly in the
quickening trees...
6
When, six months later, the engagement of Miss Hildegarde Moncrief to
Mr. Benjamin Button was made known (I say "made known," for General
Moncrief declared he would rather fall upon his sword than announce
it), the excitement in Baltimore society reached a feverish pitch. The
almost forgotten story of Benjamin's birth was remembered and sent out
upon the winds of scandal in picaresque and incredible forms. It was
said that Benjamin was really the father of Roger Button, that he was
his brother who had been in prison for forty years, that he was John
Wilkes Booth in disguise--and, finally, that he had two small conical
horns sprouting from his head.
The Sunday supplements of the New York papers played up the case with
fascinating sketches which showed the head of Benjamin Button attached
to a fish, to a snake, and, finally, to a body of solid brass. He
became known, journalistically, as the Mystery Man of Maryland. But
the true story, as is usually the case, had a very small circulation.
However, every one agreed with General Moncrief that it was "criminal"
for a lovely girl who could have married any beau in Baltimore to
throw herself into the arms of a man who was assuredly fifty. In vain
Mr. Roger Button published Us son's birth certificate in large type in
the Baltimore Blaze. No one believed it. You had only to look
at Benjamin and see.
On the part of the two people most concerned there was no wavering. So
many of the stories about her fiance were false that Hildegarde
refused stubbornly to believe even the true one. In vain General
Moncrief pointed out to her the high mortality among men of fifty--or,
at least, among men who looked fifty; in vain he told her of the
instability of the wholesale hardware business. Hildegarde had chosen
to marry for mellowness, and marry she did....
7
In one particular, at least, the friends of Hildegarde Moncrief were
mistaken. The wholesale hardware business prospered amazingly. In the
fifteen years between Benjamin Button's marriage in 1880 and his
father's retirement in 1895, the family fortune was doubled--and this
was due largely to the younger member of the firm.
Needless to say, Baltimore eventually received the couple to its
bosom. Even old General Moncrief became reconciled to his son-in-law
when Benjamin gave him the money to bring out his History of the
Civil War in twenty volumes, which had been refused by nine
prominent publishers.
In Benjamin himself fifteen years had wrought many changes. It seemed
to him that the blood flowed with new vigor through his veins. It
began to be a pleasure to rise in the morning, to walk with an active
step along the busy, sunny street, to work untiringly with his
shipments of hammers and his cargoes of nails. It was in 1890 that he
executed his famous business coup: he brought up the suggestion that
all nails used in nailing up the boxes in which nails are shipped
are the property of the shippee, a proposal which became a
statute, was approved by Chief Justice Fossile, and saved Roger Button
and Company, Wholesale Hardware, more than six hundred nails every
year.
In addition, Benjamin discovered that he was becoming more and more
attracted by the gay side of life. It was typical of his growing
enthusiasm for pleasure that he was the first man in the city of
Baltimore to own and run an automobile. Meeting him on the street, his
contemporaries would stare enviously at the picture he made of health
and vitality.
"He seems to grow younger every year," they would remark. And if old
Roger Button, now sixty-five years old, had failed at first to give a
proper welcome to his son he atoned at last by bestowing on him what
amounted to adulation.
And here we come to an unpleasant subject which it will be well to
pass over as quickly as possible. There was only one thing that
worried Benjamin Button; his wife had ceased to attract him.
At that time Hildegarde was a woman of thirty-five, with a son,
Roscoe, fourteen years old. In the early days of their marriage
Benjamin had worshipped her. But, as the years passed, her
honey-colored hair became an unexciting brown, the blue enamel of her
eyes assumed the aspect of cheap crockery--moreover, and, most of all,
she had become too settled in her ways, too placid, too content, too
anaemic in her excitements, and too sober in her taste. As a bride it
been she who had "dragged" Benjamin to dances and dinners--now
conditions were reversed. She went out socially with him, but without
enthusiasm, devoured already by that eternal inertia which comes to
live with each of us one day and stays with us to the end.
Benjamin's discontent waxed stronger. At the outbreak of the
Spanish-American War in 1898 his home had for him so little charm that
he decided to join the army. With his business influence he obtained a
commission as captain, and proved so adaptable to the work that he was
made a major, and finally a lieutenant-colonel just in time to
participate in the celebrated charge up San Juan Hill. He was slightly
wounded, and received a medal.
Benjamin had become so attached to the activity and excitement of
array life that he regretted to give it up, but his business required
attention, so he resigned his commission and came home. He was met at
the station by a brass band and escorted to his house.
8
Hildegarde, waving a large silk flag, greeted him on the porch, and
even as he kissed her he felt with a sinking of the heart that these
three years had taken their toll. She was a woman of forty now, with a
faint skirmish line of gray hairs in her head. The sight depressed
him.
Up in his room he saw his reflection in the familiar mirror--he went
closer and examined his own face with anxiety, comparing it after a
moment with a photograph of himself in uniform taken just before the
war.
"Good Lord!" he said aloud. The process was continuing. There was no
doubt of it--he looked now like a man of thirty. Instead of being
delighted, he was uneasy--he was growing younger. He had hitherto
hoped that once he reached a bodily age equivalent to his age in
years, the grotesque phenomenon which had marked his birth would cease
to function. He shuddered. His destiny seemed to him awful,
incredible.
When he came downstairs Hildegarde was waiting for him. She appeared
annoyed, and he wondered if she had at last discovered that there was
something amiss. It was with an effort to relieve the tension between
them that he broached the matter at dinner in what he considered a
delicate way.
"Well," he remarked lightly, "everybody says I look younger than
ever."
Hildegarde regarded him with scorn. She sniffed. "Do you think it's
anything to boast about?"
"I'm not boasting," he asserted uncomfortably. She sniffed again. "The
idea," she said, and after a moment: "I should think you'd have enough
pride to stop it."
"How can I?" he demanded.
"I'm not going to argue with you," she retorted. "But there's a right
way of doing things and a wrong way. If you've made up your mind to be
different from everybody else, I don't suppose I can stop you, but I
really don't think it's very considerate."
"But, Hildegarde, I can't help it."
"You can too. You're simply stubborn. You think you don't want to be
like any one else. You always have been that way, and you always will
be. But just think how it would be if every one else looked at things
as you do--what would the world be like?"
As this was an inane and unanswerable argument Benjamin made no reply,
and from that time on a chasm began to widen between them. He wondered
what possible fascination she had ever exercised over him.
To add to the breach, he found, as the new century gathered headway,
that his thirst for gaiety grew stronger. Never a party of any kind in
the city of Baltimore but he was there, dancing with the prettiest of
the young married women, chatting with the most popular of the
debutantes, and finding their company charming, while his wife, a
dowager of evil omen, sat among the chaperons, now in haughty
disapproval, and now following him with solemn, puzzled, and
reproachful eyes.
"Look!" people would remark. "What a pity! A young fellow that age
tied to a woman of forty-five. He must be twenty years younger than
his wife." They had forgotten--as people inevitably forget--that back
in 1880 their mammas and papas had also remarked about this same
ill-matched pair.
Benjamin's growing unhappiness at home was compensated for by his many
new interests. He took up golf and made a great success of it. He went
in for dancing: in 1906 he was an expert at "The Boston," and in 1908
he was considered proficient at the "Maxine," while in 1909 his
"Castle Walk" was the envy of every young man in town.
His social activities, of course, interfered to some extent with his
business, but then he had worked hard at wholesale hardware for
twenty-five years and felt that he could soon hand it on to his son,
Roscoe, who had recently graduated from Harvard.
He and his son were, in fact, often mistaken for each other. This
pleased Benjamin--he soon forgot the insidious fear which had come
over him on his return from the Spanish-American War, and grew to take
a naive pleasure in his appearance. There was only one fly in the
delicious ointment--he hated to appear in public with his wife.
Hildegarde was almost fifty, and the sight of her made him feel
absurd....
9
One September day in 1910--a few years after Roger Button & Co.,
Wholesale Hardware, had been handed over to young Roscoe Button--a
man, apparently about twenty years old, entered himself as a freshman
at Harvard University in Cambridge. He did not make the mistake of
announcing that he would never see fifty again, nor did he mention the
fact that his son had been graduated from the same institution ten
years before.
He was admitted, and almost immediately attained a prominent position
in the class, partly because he seemed a little older than the other
freshmen, whose average age was about eighteen.
But his success was largely due to the fact that in the football game
with Yale he played so brilliantly, with so much dash and with such a
cold, remorseless anger that he scored seven touchdowns and fourteen
field goals for Harvard, and caused one entire eleven of Yale men to
be carried singly from the field, unconscious. He was the most
celebrated man in college.
Strange to say, in his third or junior year he was scarcely able to
"make" the team. The coaches said that he had lost weight, and it
seemed to the more observant among them that he was not quite as tall
as before. He made no touchdowns--indeed, he was retained on the team
chiefly in hope that his enormous reputation would bring terror and
disorganization to the Yale team.
In his senior year he did not make the team at all. He had grown so
slight and frail that one day he was taken by some sophomores for a
freshman, an incident which humiliated him terribly. He became known
as something of a prodigy--a senior who was surely no more than
sixteen--and he was often shocked at the worldliness of some of his
classmates. His studies seemed harder to him--he felt that they were
too advanced. He had heard his classmates speak of St. Midas's, the
famous preparatory school, at which so many of them had prepared for
college, and he determined after his graduation to enter himself at
St. Midas's, where the sheltered life among boys his own size would be
more congenial to him.
Upon his graduation in 1914 he went home to Baltimore with his Harvard
diploma in his pocket. Hildegarde was now residing in Italy, so
Benjamin went to live with his son, Roscoe. But though he was welcomed
in a general way there was obviously no heartiness in Roscoe's feeling
toward him--there was even perceptible a tendency on his son's part to
think that Benjamin, as he moped about the house in adolescent
mooniness, was somewhat in the way. Roscoe was married now and
prominent in Baltimore life, and he wanted no scandal to creep out in
connection with his family.
Benjamin, no longer persona grata with the debutantes and
younger college set, found himself left much done, except for the
companionship of three or four fifteen-year-old boys in the
neighborhood. His idea of going to St. Midas's school recurred to
him.
"Say," he said to Roscoe one day, "I've told you over and over that I
want to go to prep, school."
"Well, go, then," replied Roscoe shortly. The matter was distasteful
to him, and he wished to avoid a discussion.
"I can't go alone," said Benjamin helplessly. "You'll have to enter me
and take me up there."
"I haven't got time," declared Roscoe abruptly. His eyes narrowed and
he looked uneasily at his father. "As a matter of fact," he added,
"you'd better not go on with this business much longer. You better
pull up short. You better--you better"--he paused and his face
crimsoned as he sought for words--"you better turn right around and
start back the other way. This has gone too far to be a joke. It isn't
funny any longer. You--you behave yourself!"
Benjamin looked at him, on the verge of tears.
"And another thing," continued Roscoe, "when visitors are in the house
I want you to call me 'Uncle'--not 'Roscoe,' but 'Uncle,' do you
understand? It looks absurd for a boy of fifteen to call me by my
first name. Perhaps you'd better call me 'Uncle' all the time,
so you'll get used to it."
With a harsh look at his father, Roscoe turned away....
10
At the termination of this interview, Benjamin wandered dismally
upstairs and stared at himself in the mirror. He had not shaved for
three months, but he could find nothing on his face but a faint white
down with which it seemed unnecessary to meddle. When he had first
come home from Harvard, Roscoe had approached him with the proposition
that he should wear eye-glasses and imitation whiskers glued to his
cheeks, and it had seemed for a moment that the farce of his early
years was to be repeated. But whiskers had itched and made him
ashamed. He wept and Roscoe had reluctantly relented.
Benjamin opened a book of boys' stories, The Boy Scouts in Bimini
Bay, and began to read. But he found himself thinking persistently
about the war. America had joined the Allied cause during the
preceding month, and Benjamin wanted to enlist, but, alas, sixteen was
the minimum age, and he did not look that old. His true age, which was
fifty-seven, would have disqualified him, anyway.
There was a knock at his door, and the butler appeared with a letter
bearing a large official legend in the corner and addressed to Mr.
Benjamin Button. Benjamin tore it open eagerly, and read the enclosure
with delight. It informed him that many reserve officers who had
served in the Spanish-American War were being called back into service
with a higher rank, and it enclosed his commission as brigadier-general
in the United States army with orders to report immediately.
Benjamin jumped to his feet fairly quivering with enthusiasm. This was
what he had wanted. He seized his cap, and ten minutes later he had
entered a large tailoring establishment on Charles Street, and asked
in his uncertain treble to be measured for a uniform.
"Want to play soldier, sonny?" demanded a clerk casually.
Benjamin flushed. "Say! Never mind what I want!" he retorted angrily.
"My name's Button and I live on Mt. Vernon Place, so you know I'm good
for it."
"Well," admitted the clerk hesitantly, "if you're not, I guess your
daddy is, all right."
Benjamin was measured, and a week later his uniform was completed. He
had difficulty in obtaining the proper general's insignia because the
dealer kept insisting to Benjamin that a nice V.W.C.A. badge would
look just as well and be much more fun to play with.
Saying nothing to Roscoe, he left the house one night and proceeded by
train to Camp Mosby, in South Carolina, where he was to command an
infantry brigade. On a sultry April day he approached the entrance to
the camp, paid off the taxicab which had brought him from the station,
and turned to the sentry on guard.
"Get some one to handle my luggage!" he said briskly.
The sentry eyed him reproachfully. "Say," he remarked, "where you
goin' with the general's duds, sonny?"
Benjamin, veteran of the Spanish-American War, whirled upon him with
fire in his eye, but with, alas, a changing treble voice.
"Come to attention!" he tried to thunder; he paused for breath--then
suddenly he saw the sentry snap his heels together and bring his rifle
to the present. Benjamin concealed a smile of gratification, but when
he glanced around his smile faded. It was not he who had inspired
obedience, but an imposing artillery colonel who was approaching on
horseback.
"Colonel!" called Benjamin shrilly.
The colonel came up, drew rein, and looked coolly down at him with a
twinkle in his eyes. "Whose little boy are you?" he demanded kindly.
"I'll soon darn well show you whose little boy I am!" retorted
Benjamin in a ferocious voice. "Get down off that horse!"
The colonel roared with laughter.
"You want him, eh, general?"
"Here!" cried Benjamin desperately. "Read this." And he thrust his
commission toward the colonel. The colonel read it, his eyes popping
from their sockets. "Where'd you get this?" he demanded, slipping the
document into his own pocket. "I got it from the Government, as you'll
soon find out!" "You come along with me," said the colonel with a
peculiar look. "We'll go up to headquarters and talk this over. Come
along." The colonel turned and began walking his horse in the
direction of headquarters. There was nothing for Benjamin to do but
follow with as much dignity as possible--meanwhile promising himself a
stern revenge. But this revenge did not materialize. Two days later,
however, his son Roscoe materialized from Baltimore, hot and cross
from a hasty trip, and escorted the weeping general, sans
uniform, back to his home.
II
In 1920 Roscoe Button's first child was born. During the attendant
festivities, however, no one thought it "the thing" to mention, that
the little grubby boy, apparently about ten years of age who played
around the house with lead soldiers and a miniature circus, was the
new baby's own grandfather.
No one disliked the little boy whose fresh, cheerful face was crossed
with just a hint of sadness, but to Roscoe Button his presence was a
source of torment. In the idiom of his generation Roscoe did not
consider the matter "efficient." It seemed to him that his father, in
refusing to look sixty, had not behaved like a "red-blooded
he-man"--this was Roscoe's favorite expression--but in a curious and
perverse manner. Indeed, to think about the matter for as much as a
half an hour drove him to the edge of insanity. Roscoe believed that
"live wires" should keep young, but carrying it out on such a scale
was--was--was inefficient. And there Roscoe rested.
Five years later Roscoe's little boy had grown old enough to play
childish games with little Benjamin under the supervision of the same
nurse. Roscoe took them both to kindergarten on the same day, and
Benjamin found that playing with little strips of colored paper,
making mats and chains and curious and beautiful designs, was the most
fascinating game in the world. Once he was bad and had to stand in the
corner--then he cried--but for the most part there were gay hours in
the cheerful room, with the sunlight coming in the windows and Miss
Bailey's kind hand resting for a moment now and then in his tousled
hair.
Roscoe's son moved up into the first grade after a year, but Benjamin
stayed on in the kindergarten. He was very happy. Sometimes when other
tots talked about what they would do when they grew up a shadow would
cross his little face as if in a dim, childish way he realized that
those were things in which he was never to share.
The days flowed on in monotonous content. He went back a third year to
the kindergarten, but he was too little now to understand what the
bright shining strips of paper were for. He cried because the other
boys were bigger than he, and he was afraid of them. The teacher
talked to him, but though he tried to understand he could not
understand at all.
He was taken from the kindergarten. His nurse, Nana, in her starched
gingham dress, became the center of his tiny world. On bright days
they walked in the park; Nana would point at a great gray monster and
say "elephant," and Benjamin would say it after her, and when he was
being undressed for bed that night he would say it over and over aloud
to her: "Elyphant, elyphant, elyphant." Sometimes Nana let him jump on
the bed, which was fun, because if you sat down exactly right it would
bounce you up on your feet again, and if you said "Ah" for a long time
while you jumped you got a very pleasing broken vocal effect.
He loved to take a big cane from the hat-rack and go around hitting
chairs and tables with it and saying: "Fight, fight, fight." When
there were people there the old ladies would cluck at him, which
interested him, and the young ladies would try to kiss him, which he
submitted to with mild boredom. And when the long day was done at five
o'clock he would go upstairs with Nana and be fed on oatmeal and nice
soft mushy foods with a spoon.
There were no troublesome memories in his childish sleep; no token
came to him of his brave days at college, of the glittering years when
he flustered the hearts of many girls. There were only the white, safe
walls of his crib and Nana and a man who came to see him sometimes,
and a great big orange ball that Nana pointed at just before his
twilight bed hour and called "sun." When the sun went his eyes were
sleepy--there were no dreams, no dreams to haunt him.
The past--the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan Hill; the
first years of his marriage when he worked late into the summer dusk
down in the busy city for young Hildegarde whom he loved; the days
before that when he sat smoking far into the night in the gloomy old
Button house on Monroe Street with his grandfather-all these had faded
like unsubstantial dreams from his mind as though they had never been.
He did not remember.
He did not remember clearly whether the milk was warm or cool at his
last feeding or how the days passed--there was only his crib and
Nana's familiar presence. And then he remembered nothing. When he was
hungry he cried--that was all. Through the noons and nights he
breathed and over him there were soft mumblings and murmurings that he
scarcely heard, and faintly differentiated smells, and light and
darkness.
Then it was all dark, and his white crib and the dim faces that moved
above him, and the warm sweet aroma of the milk, faded out altogether
from his mind.
-THE END-
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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - The Original Short Story by Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald