ABC Wednesday - X is for X, the shape

Ah, the letter X. What a quandary it posed for me because I just don't know anyone with a xylophone or a pet named Xerxes. Once I started to mull it over, I realized that I see Xs every single day.

These Xs make up the guard rails of the Hawthorne Bridge. I took this photo while I waited on the bridge in the Buick during a bridge lift. Yes, I was finally on the bridge during a lift, even if it was at night and I couldn't see a doggone thing! It was eerie to be sitting still practically over the middle of the Willamette River, let me tell you.


These Xs in the photo below make up the expanding and contracting gate of our apartment's elevator. It's either our best friend or the bane of our existence, depending upon its ability to slide shut smoothly upon a person's having exited the elevator.

Well, to tell the truth, I shouldn't say the gate is a gift except for when it shuts easily by itself, therefore allowing the connection to be made and the elevator to come when called. The bane-of-our-existence part comes in when it will not slide shut by itself (for whatever reason), and the humans who live in the building fail to pull it shut upon exiting the elevator. Then the elevator has absolutely no idea that you have called, and you have to go looking for it which is quite precarious and/or dangerous for Mama. Aggravated is way too tame a word to describe how that makes us feel.

Remember when movies and television shows modeled such a thing as common courtesy, in addition to its being taught at home? Oh, I know it is alive and well, but when something like this happens over and over again (as it did here recently when the elevator doors were being replaced on all four floors), it shakes one's faith in the existence and health of common courtesy.