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One Day in the Summer, 1860
The Roger Button family, holding an "enviable position, both social and financial, in ante-bellum Baltimore" expect a baby (60), They are "fifty years ahead of style" as the baby is to be born in a hospital (60). -
A Few Hours After Benjamin Button's Birth
Six hours after Benjaim Button was born, Mr. Button goes out to buy him some clothes. He asks a store clerk for clothes for a six-hour-old baby and then asks for a much larger suit. The curious clerk asks Mr. Button a question: "How old did you say that boy of yours was?" (65). "He's--sixteen," Mr. Button responds (65). He proceeds to buy his baby, an old man, the suit anyways. -
Another Day in the Summer, 1860
Mr. Button's baby was born, but there was a problem. After rushing to the hospital and seeing many terrified doctors and nurses, he finally gets to see his baby. This is what he saw: "Wrapped in a voluminous white blanket, and partically crammed into one of the cribs, there sat an old man apaprently abuot seventy years of age" (62). Mr. Button's baby is a fully sized old man! -
Later On in the Summer
Mr. Button is in denial. He wants his baby to be a baby and not an old man, and tries to make Benjamin act his age with a declaration: "At first he declared that if Benjamin didn't like warm milk he could go without food altogether, but he was finally prevailed upon to allow his son bread and butter, and even oatmeal by way of a compromise" (66). -
Five Year Old Benjamin Button
At five years old and looking like a sixty-five year old man, Benjamin is sent to kindergarten. An old man in kindergarten is odd and distracting, of course, so he was removed from the class. The Roger Button family, still in denial, cited "that they felt he was too young" as the reason for Benjamin's removal (68). -
Twelve Year Old Benjamin Button
"Did his eyes deceive him, or had his hair turned in the dozen years of his life from white to iron-gray under its concealing dye?" Benjamin Button thinks (68). This is the first time the reader is told that Benjamin grows in reverse. -
Eighteen Year Old Benjamin Button
Benjamin Button attempts to go to Yale college. Upon meeting the registrar for Yale, the registrar confuses Benjamin for his father. When Benjamin, a man who looks fifty years old, told the registrar that he was eighteen, the man became angry. "The idea! he shouted. "A man of your age trying to enter here as a freshman. Eighteen years old, are you? Well, I'll give you eighteen minutes to get out of town" the registrar yells at Benjamin (70). -
Twenty-and-a-half-a year old Benjamin Button
Benjamin Button met a woman named Hildegarde Moncrief. After six months, "the engagement of Miss Hildegard Moncrief to Mr. Benjamin Button was made known" (73). -
Twenty Year Old Benjamin Button
Benjamin Button, now fifty, has grown to look almost the same age as his father. The narrator gives an explanation of how similar they appear: "They appeared about the same age, and could have passed for brothers" (71). -
Fifty Year Old Benjamin Button
After joining the college of Harvard, Benjamin joined the football team. In a Harvard vs. Yale game, Benjamin played "with so much dash and with such a cold, remorseless anger that he could have scored seven touchdowns and fourteen field goals for Harvard, and caused one entire class of eleven Yale men to be carried away from the field, unconscious" (78). -
FIfty-Four Year Old Benjamin Button
The effects of Benjamin Button's reversed aging process begin to show with harsh effects: "In his senior year he did not make the team at all. He had grown so slight and frail that one day he was taken by some sophomores for a freshman, an incident which humiliated him terribly" (78). -
~70 Year Old Benjamin Button
Benjamin finally dies, but not like a normal person would. He just faded. He shrunk down to the size of a baby and began to act like one too, "Then it was all dark, and his white crib and the dim faces that moved above him, and the warm sweet aroma of the milk, faded out altogether from his mind" (83). This ends the short story.