Buttonhole the button-pushers

HERE’S a word you’ve never heard before: koumpounophilia. Don’t feel bad about it, though. It’s new to you because I’ve just made it up.

It ought to exist. It should be the antonym of a recognised medical term, koumpounophobia, which is (honestly) a fear of buttons.

It’s my experience that people love a button – specifically, a button you can push. Like a smiling baby, a £2 coin on the pavement, or a sign saying “Wet Paint – Do Not Touch”, we just can’t resist them.

This theory is reinforced for me on an almost daily basis at Waverley Station. My morning bus delivers me there at a time when my train is standing on the platform, but is not ready to depart. The incoming train has arrived, split in two, and the front three coaches have departed for pastures new. The rear three – my future conveyance – stand there, forlorn and locked, because there is as yet no driver or conductor.

I wait, patiently, often reading my newspaper, sometimes my Kindle, sometimes my phone. And without fail someone will come up and push the button on the train door. Often, this will happen two or three times before the train crew arrive and put us out of our misery.

I know I shouldn’t, but I sometimes take this an insult. Do people really think I’m standing on an icy-cold platform and not boarding a warm-astoast train just for the fun of it? Don’t they think I would have opened the door if the option had been available?

And then I soften. I realise that this is a normal human reflex. I do it myself, all the time.

I approach a pedestrian crossing, and I can’t resist. I push the button, sometimes furtively.

Hey, you never know. It might just make the lights change quicker. After all, these things are programmed to respond to the number of times they’re pushed, aren’t they? Aren’t they?

I bet we’ve all done it. Who among us hasn’t jabbed a button to summon a lift even though it’s already illuminated? We think its electronic brain either hasn’t heard us or is ignoring us, so we decide to nag it to death.

The same phenomenon occurs with the “refresh” key on a computer keyboard. I wore mine out years ago.

I’m hoping that somewhere there’s a training course that coaches this impulse out of people like the President of the United States, highheid-yins at Cape Canaveral and cleaners on Trident submarines.

It would have to be held on the ground floor, though. Don’t tempt ’em with lifts.

‘‘ And then I soften. I realise that this is a normal human reflex. I do it myself, all the time