LAKE TO RIVER GIRL SCOUTS Optimist buttonholes life with bits of humor

The collection covers four bulletin boards.
By SHERRI L. SHAULIS
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
NILES -- A co-worker once told Susan E. Paczak that anyone as perpetually cheerful and optimistic as she had to be from La-La Land or Oz.
That's what started it all.
"One day I came in to work, and there was a button for me that read, 'Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore,'" the Austintown resident said.
It became an inside joke at the office of Lake to River Girl Scouts on Warren Avenue. Paczak is always happy, energetic and peppy in the mornings. Some of her co-workers, and even family members, aren't.
"It's an issue my husband and I had to work through very early on," she said with a laugh. "We learned that as long as he gets up 45 minutes before me and has his cup of coffee, we are fine."
The 60-year-old said she's always been a firm believer in the Abraham Lincoln quote "People are as happy as they make up their minds to be."
"I'm no Pollyanna," Paczak said. "But I'm a firm believer that life is too short to be taken so seriously. I'm not the type of person who allows myself to dwell on 'what ifs.'"
Extent of collection
That's why from that single button, her collection has grown in the past 20 years to cover more than four bulletin boards in her office.
Whether she finds them at bookstores, special-orders them from catalogs or Web sites or has them brought to her by family, friends or co-workers, Paczak said all of the buttons and pins have one thing in common: They make her laugh.
"People ask me if they reflect my personal philosophies or my political views," said Paczak, who serves as director of training and communications for the local office of the Girl Scouts. "I guess in a way, they do. I especially am fond of the ones that make fun of established institutions, like politics."
Many of the buttons are general humor, she points out. Some of the more prominent buttons have sayings like:
*"I'm depressed nobody wants my job."
*"No matter where you go, there you are."
*"I refuse to grow up."
*"Be kind to me. I have a teenager."
What she likes
She admits her preference is for buttons that make fun of people who hold an extreme position.
"I'm just as likely to have a button that makes fun of Rush Limbaugh as I am to have one that makes fun of Howard Stern," she said. "But I always try to avoid anything I think will offend anybody."
She also keeps the humorous and political ideas confined to the pins, joking that her husband, John, won't let her put bumper stickers on their vehicles. But whether they adorn the walls of her office or her lapel, Paczak hopes the sense of humor reflected on the buttons and pins will rub off on those around her.
"A lot of these buttons poke fun at things I hold near and dear to my heart, like religion and faith," she said. "But I like to think that there isn't anything that is so sacred that you can't poke a little fun at it."
slshaulis@vindy.com