A Button for Everything

It seems as though humanity has seen it all after escaping the warped hellhole we called 2020. We’ve witnessed everything from murder hornets to the atrocity of singer-songwriter Justin Bieber’s “Yummy” sweeping the Internet. For a while, there had been no terrifying notion left unexplored, no event that could’ve possibly shocked our fatigued and out-of-shape beings anymore.

That is, until, the revelation of former President Donald Trump’s Diet Coke button.

You read that correctly. Our very own spray-tanned TV personality left behind a fun little surprise in the Oval Office for the unsuspecting President Joe Biden, along with all the toilet seats up. A button, of course, whose sole purpose is to order a good ol’ glass of the second-worst soft drink I have ever had the displeasure of trying (we all know that Sprite, the worst one, only serves a purpose at some nine-year-old gremlin’s birthday party).

While this particular button is questionable and may be buried under a series of distasteful memes, its potential has not gone unnoticed by me. Why make a pesky app for everything when you could have it all at the push of a cartoony button? With some modifications, buttons to summon oddly specific things could be the next big advancement in technology. Thus, here are some proposals for insanely useful buttons! Mr. President, take notes.

1. The brain cell button. A good number of us require some extra noggin capacity to finish up algebra homework at 2:42 a.m. because having some semblance of a sane sleep schedule is a huge no-no at Stuyvesant. The button, however, has a cooldown timer between uses. It must allow for an adequate number of brain cells to fry before summoning new ones. Abuse of the button would lead to an alarming number of big brains with the capacity to do physics problems or solve spicy mysteries such as what dimension pens teleport to after you’ve dropped them.

2. The FitnessGram Pacer Test Button. The possibilities for this are just endless. Need motivation? The familiar voice will remind you of your need to absolutely destroy Craig at running back and forth in a run-down gymnasium, while your gym teacher severely judges you. Want to mess with someone? With one press of this button, you’ll send every fiber of their being into a fight-or-flight response and instill in them a vague desire to improve their cardiorespiratory fitness level. Lost in a place where you don’t know the language? No worries, the distress call of the Pacer Test is universally recognized.

3. The Pepsi Button. Though it may seem like a knockoff of the iconic Diet Coke button, the positive implications of allowing this heavenly nectar to be easily accessible are wholly distinct. The population would be happier, more capable of resolving plaguing issues, and perhaps even motivated to finish up a 10-minute task that’s been left on hold for months. As the ultimate energizing beverage, Pepsi instills inner peace and a willingness to compromise. Accordingly, it is entirely possible that replacing the Diet Coke button in the White House with one for Pepsi could lead to world peace as well as stability in our polarized world of politics. If anything, a Pepsi Button would encourage the eradication of Diet Coke entirely. No one truly wants to deal with this lackluster bottle of misery. Any step toward destroying it is a service to humanity.

4. Finally, the No. 2 Pencil Button. You can try as hard as humanly possible, but when the situation calls for you to bubble in answers with those banana-hued writing utensils, your chances of randomly finding one decrease by a phenomenal degree. With a push of the button, a pencil would materialize upon whatever tear-stained test paper lying in front of you. Though this would require an exhaustive understanding of quantum mechanics, a profound mastery of energy manipulation, and a heck of a lot of pencils, we can all agree that it would be worth it.

As we wait for the patenting and large scale manufacturing of these extremely useful buttons, we can only snicker at the pathetically uninspired Diet Coke Button. It almost makes one forget trivial matters, such as widespread hunger or the socioeconomic tolls of a global pandemic. It’s comforting to know that we’re focusing on what’s truly important.