Belly Buttons

I ride an elevator up to the dining room for lunch every day. You hear the most interesting things in elevators. One of my neighbors in the Retirement Home where I live said, “Did you know that Alfred Hitchcock had no belly button?

I hadn’t really thought about it, but I suppose there are a few among us who have missing body parts. But I always thought belly buttons were a necessary anatomical feature. It’s there because it was once attached to your mother in her womb. It’s the little thingy that the doctor cuts when baby plops out,  and somebody yells: “Cut the cord!” then, usually the same person, says: “Now tie it off neatly with this piece of string.”

If the delivery room nurse ties it off in the right way you wind up with a nice looking (?) belly button. If not it is referred to as “an outie”. (I have “an innie”). When I was around 5 or 6 I used to play in the apartment building sandbox with other kids in the building. Hermann, one of the boy-kids, had an outie and his mother taped a half dollar over the protrusion, a regular practice for kids with outies. I guess it was supposed to flatten out the outie.

This kid was always losing his half dollar with the sand and all. He was chubby and always sweating which caused the tape to become loose. One day when I was playing alone in the sandbox I found a fifty-cent piece. I took it up and gave it to my Mom instead of heading for the candy store, my first impulse. She said, “You can’t keep that, Rosie.  It belongs to Hermann.” Then I wished I’d followed that first impulse. So I took the half dollar to Hermann’s flat. I didn’t want to.  It would have bought a lot of penny candy. But Hermann’s Mom was so overjoyed at getting the coin back for her son’s outie I didn’t feel so bad about it. I wonder how long Hermann had to wear that half dollar on his belly button.

Back to Alfred Hitchcock. I figured it out. He was an alien from another galaxy where babies don’t have belly buttons.  It is the only logical explanation.

On the other hand, Alfred may have had an outie when he was little and when the half dollar didn't work he just decided to grow a large tummy and the darn thing just flattened out by itself, making it look like he didn't have one.  And that's the other only logical explanation.