A Curious Case Indeed
“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.”
So goes a scene from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Of course, everyone knows there’s a movie now, and although it’s not something that will make anyone rush for New Orleans hotel reservations, I found the movie gorgeous in more ways than one. In a nutshell, it is a story about a man who ages backward. Born an “old man” and spent his life in reverse, if only in the physical sense. If you need extra persuading, the movie stars Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt. There. I’ll be rewatching this next.