Click! With the last weak tremor of the thread, the little wooden button Buttons tore away from Johnny's blue coat. He made a small somersault in the air and landed on the gray pavement with a quiet thud. The world suddenly seemed enormous and noisy. Above him towered huge shoes and Johnny's legs, which didn't even realize they had lost someone, were moving farther and farther away.
"Johnny, wait!" Buttons wanted to shout, but no sound came from his small wooden body.
He was left alone. Before him stretched an endless sidewalk of rough, bumpy asphalt. In the distance glowed the red front door of their house. That was his goal. He had to get there!
Determinedly, he braced himself against the ground and tried to move. Ouch! The rough surface scratched and slowed him down. He felt as if he were trying to move while glued to the ground. With all his strength, he moved only a hair's breadth.
"I'll never manage this," he sighed sadly.
Just then a breeze blew and Buttons rolled onto a large, flat stone that was part of the sidewalk. It was smooth and cool. When Buttons tried to move here, something amazing happened. With a little push, he glided almost effortlessly!
"Hooray! That's it!" he cheered. He slid from one side of the stone to the other and felt like he was on the best slide in the world. But the joy didn't last long. With the last slide, he tumbled over the edge of the stone and landed again on the rough, slowing asphalt.
Confused, he looked from the rough sidewalk to the smooth stone. "Why was it so easy there and so hard here?" he wondered aloud.
"Because not every surface is the same, little one," came a thin, cheerful voice.
Buttons turned around. Next to him landed a beautiful ladybug with shiny red wings and seven black spots. She was curiously examining him with her small eyes.
"My name is Spotty," she introduced herself. "And I can see you have a problem with traveling."
"My name is Buttons. And yes, I do," he admitted. "On that stone it was wonderful, but here I can barely move. Is it magic?"
The ladybug laughed. "No magic, dear Buttons. It's something called friction."
"Friction?" Buttons repeated the unfamiliar word.
"Exactly," Spotty nodded. "Imagine that the rough sidewalk has millions of tiny invisible hands that grab you and don't want to let you go. The rougher the surface, the stronger those hands hold you. That's high friction."
Buttons looked at the asphalt and almost seemed to see those small rough grains really reaching out their hands toward him.
"And the smooth stone?" he asked.
"That has very few of those hands. It's almost completely smooth, so there's nothing to slow you down. That's why you slid so well on it. That's low friction," Spotty explained and walked across the stone to show him. Her legs almost slid by themselves. Then she jumped down onto the asphalt. "See? Here I have to scurry much more vigorously."
Buttons watched everything carefully. Suddenly it made sense. It wasn't about magic, but about what kind of surface it was. Just then a stronger wind blew and swept him from the sidewalk into the short, green grass.
"Oh no!" he cried. Here it was even worse! The grass blades surrounded him like a dense forest. They held him from every side. He couldn't move forward or backward.
"This is like the roughest sidewalk in the world!" he complained and helplessly swayed between two blades.
"Exactly," confirmed Spotty, who had flown after him. "The grass holds you even tighter."
Buttons was almost giving up. How was he supposed to get from here all the way to those red doors? He raised his small wooden gaze and then he noticed it. Not far from them lay a large, green leaf on the sidewalk that had fallen from a tree. The morning dew had made it shiny and wet.
Buttons stared at it. It was smooth. Very, very smooth. And wet. An idea was born in his small head.
"Spotty!" he called out excitedly. "Look at that leaf! It's smooth like that stone! Maybe even smoother! What if... what if I could get on it? It would be like my own portable slide!"
Ladybug Spotty looked at him with admiration. "That's an excellent idea, Buttons! You used your head! Come on, I'll help you."
With combined efforts, where Spotty pushed and Buttons rolled, they managed to get him out of the grass and roll him all the way to the edge of the wet leaf. With a final roll, Buttons found himself in the middle of his new, shiny boat.
Just a gentle breeze was enough and it happened. The leaf moved! Smoothly and effortlessly, it began to glide across the rough asphalt toward the house. Buttons rode like a king. He passed the rough places that had troubled him so much before, and waved at them with a smile.
The journey that had seemed impossible was suddenly a fun adventure. The leaf stopped only when it gently bumped into the wooden threshold in front of the red doors. He was home!
"Thank you, Spotty! I couldn't have done it without you!" he called gratefully to his new friend.
"You're the one who figured it out, Buttons," the ladybug smiled. "You just learned how the world works." She waved her wings at him and flew away.
Buttons lay on the threshold, tired but immensely proud. He understood that even though he was small, with a little thinking and understanding, he could overcome even the roughest path. Now he just waited for Johnny to open the door and find his lost, but very wise button.