I have slowly come to this conclusion over the past few months and am never more sure that I've stumbled across something than when I am trying to get Elliott into an outfit. Baby clothes are fairly simple. You have your onesies, you have your pants, you have your shirts, you have your sleepers. That's pretty much it. If your baby is wearing more than three articles of clothing at one time, you're overthinking things.

Moving on, aside from the fabric, there is really only one other factor in an article of clothing and that is how it is fastened. With virtually no exceptions, the only two viable options here are buttons and zippers. Here is where the conspiracy kicks in. Well over half of Elliott's one-piece clothing items and sleepers use snapping buttons. In my limited parenting experience, I find this to be absolutely insane. On just one item, you have to snap together close to 20 different buttons which, on paper, might not seem like a difficult task but try wrapping one around a rolling, squealing, 20-pound bag of jello sometime. If my results are similar to other Americans, the success rate of actually fastening each button correctly is less than 5%. And then there's the joy of putting Elliott on the ground after a grueling 20 minute exercise of physical stamina and dexterity only to watch each button start to pop as he crawls away. These are outfits made for very small gigolos, not babies.

Now... zippers? 15 seconds. Done. No scratches, no bruises, no looking down 5 minutes later to see your son wearing what now looks like a skirt. The zipper was invented in 1913. And it was perfect then and is perfect now. So my question is this:

How in the world do buttons still exist in this world not only as a viable fastening option but as THE viable fastening option? In a sane world, Baron von Buttonsworth would have been sitting at his desk in his enormous factory back in 1913 when his assistant ran in with the first zipper. Mr. Buttonsworth would have looked at it and let out a sigh, put on his hat and buttoned up his coat. Then he would take one more wistful look at the empire he created before hitting the button to shut down the factory.

There have been all kinds of similar rivalries like this throughout history. Whenever a superior version of something comes along, it instantly and completely usurps the previous one. That's how progress is made. DVDs were a better product than VHS tapes which were, in turn, a better product than Beta. So why didn't this happen to buttons? Clever marketing? Aesthetics? I have no idea. All I know is that if I knew I wouldn't be mocked, every shirt I own would use a zipper and that's only because we don't yet have the technology where I can roll out of bed and directly into a new, clean shirt. If I eliminated all buttons from my life I would save myself at least one minute of time a day. Look at the movies. What's the one thing that every vision of the future has in common? The clothes have no buttons. 

Clearly something is going on and I think I'm through the looking glass here.