Count your X's and O's.

For years, I have been baffled by the X’s and O’s symbols on greeting cards. I know they loosely represent kisses and hugs, but my puzzlement is what is the symbolic image connection? An X is hardly an image of a kiss and an O is a stretch for the visual image of a hug. It is just this kind of bewildering question that “I wile away the hours conferring with the flowers,” as the Tinman would say.

Yes, you can bank on it. I do daydream about these things. For example, I still am bamboozled about how I missed numerous grammar questions on my SAT exams. However, people who read my blogs are often not.

But that is not the point. The point is that I carry these bizarre controversies in my ahead until one day, in an aha moment, the answer springs forth like Judy Garland skipping down the yellow brick road.
And that is exactly what happened this morning with the X’s and O’s.

In an aha moment caused by a sudden burst of hot water slamming against my head in the shower, I understood the symbolic representation of these tried and tested old letter icons that we all use to express a level of animate intimacy through an inanimate piece of iconic paper called a greeting card. What is this letter symbolism you ask? The answer my dear lies here.


The X’s represent people crossing paths. The X is formed by two straight life-lines going in different directions, but for an instant, they cross, forming an intersection in the center of the X. That intersection is where we meet if only for a moment in the life of another. I had just such an experience this weekend. I spent some time with my wife, our youngest son, his girlfriend, our oldest son, his wife and their 4 children and just for a magical Disney moment all our lives intersected. It was wonderful. That moment is gone now, but it is a memory signified by the letter X, in all of our lives; where we crossed and intersected if only for a moment, in the great span we call a lifetime. Together, we made a series of memorable X’s.


And the O's, professor Bob, what do they mean? They are a continuous line that form a circle and say, “Come a-round again.” It also reminds me of “what goes around comes around.” Not in a negative way, but a positive reminder that if we want to make a lot of X’s we need to cross some paths again and again. I am looking forward to next thanksgiving and the upcoming holidays. The holidays are a series of once in a life-line opportunities to make some more wonderful symbolic letters together.

Good luck to all of you as you make your own X’s and O’s. And me, I am off to see the wizard to make a few of my own.

They are truly wonderful.

X’s and O’s.