One day about a month ago, a young man was walking down a street. More to the point, he was walking past a mailbox at the corner of 4^th Avenue E. and Tullis St. in Olympia, Washington, when something lying on the sidewalk caught his eye.

He picked it up.

It was a small button - a shiny, white, circular button, about 2” in diameter with a clip pin on the back.  It was the type of button sometimes used in political campaigns and by organizations seeking to bring awareness to causes such as animal rights, breast cancer or homelessness.  At other times they can be more capricious and contain folksy sayings or pictures of cultural heroes like Humphrey Bogart, Marylyn Monroe, Michael Jordan or Mickey Mouse. 

The young man seldom paid attention to the flotsam and jetsam of the streets, but this one was intriguing, different, interesting.  He flicked pieces of dried leaves and road dirt from the front and examined it more carefully.  It contained a simple red logo printed once on each side and in the middle were some words. 

It said “I’m An S.O.B. - Ask Me Why”

“Good question,” he thought to himself, “why?”

And then shrugging his shoulders, the man stuffed the button into the pocket of his coat and continued on his way.

•     •     •

Later that day, or maybe the next day, or maybe the day after that, the young man emptied the pocket of his coat and rediscovered the button. 

“I’m An S.O.B.” he read, “Ask Me Why”

He pondered the saying.  “Why an S.O.B.?” he reasoned.  Did it mean the more obvious ‘son-of-a-bitch’, or was this just some clever play on words?  He ran all of the combinations of S-O-B that he could think of through his mind but came up with nothing that made sense.  He decided to resort to the tried and true method that anyone uses when they really need to know the answer to something fast.

He googled it.

Within seconds of googling the phrase on the button, the marvel of the Internet brought him to an article entitled “Sweet Old Burt: SOB” that had been posted by a blogger in Pennsylvania on September 17^th, 2009.  It detailed how the blogger’s father, a man named Burt, was something of a Jeckle and Hyde, alternating between “Sweet Old Burt” and “sonna ‘fa bitch”. 

Old Burt had a faded old button that he’d once found on the street.  He was quite fond of the button and had saved it and often wore it with ironic pride.  It said: “I’m An S.O.B. – Ask Me Why”, and was found amongst the pencils and photos and news clippings of his desk drawer when he died.  His children, at a loss for what to put on the final gravestone, decided upon “SOB – Ask Me Why.”    It’s a long, story.  (“But,” as Kevin Costner tells James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams, “it’s a really GOOD story…”)

•     •      •

About a week ago, I was checking my email.  In amongst the more familiar and easily recognized messages was a message from someone that I didn’t know.  This isn’t unusual.  I have a number of articles and blogs out on the Internet on everything from using dawn redwoods as bonsai, to a fossil whale in Vermont, to a murder that I witnessed in San Francisco.  I frequently get queries from people looking for information about something that I’ve mentioned.  The new message was from Olympia, Washington and was titled:  “Your Father ----- SOB”.

Attached to the short note was a photograph showing a young man holding a button up to his computer’s camera.  The button read: “I’m An S.O.B. – Ask Me Why.”  The note mentioned that he’d found the button in his hometown and had traced it to me.  He was even willing to FedEx it to me if I wanted it. 

I immediately wrote back, thanking him for the wonderful thought.  “Since I have the original button,” I wrote him, “I really don’t need the second one.”  I told him to spare himself the expense and hassle of running to FedEx during the holiday season and to instead keep the button as a souvenir.  He was now a member of the exclusive “Burt Howe SOB Club”, I told him, membership: two. 

•     •     •

My dad, Sweet Old Burt the sonna ‘fa bitch, would absolutely have loved this story.  He was a man that fully appreciated the irony of life.  I think that’s why I’m such a fan of irony myself.  If he could know that the Internet (whatever THAT is) would some day connect a young man in Olympia, Washington to an old man in Pennsylvania, over the issue of a silly button that had been found twice on the street, thousands of miles and a generation apart… he’d have died laughing.

The crazy old SOB.

NOTE:  If your computer won't link directly to the original article, you can find it at:

 http://open.salon.com/blog/jeff_howe/2009/09/17/sweet_old_burt_sob