You no push the button. I push the button.

For those of you unfamiliar with the title, I suggest you try to find the Baby Plucky episode of Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures. It portrays one of the main characters (Plucky Duck) as a child (in diapers) at the shopping mall. He is fascinated with the "elelator" and likes how it goes up and down when you push the button. (I think this is a riot, but I also thought Chicken Boo was the dumbest cartoon out there, and someone else I knew thought it was high comedy, so it's all a matter of taste.)

When you need to cross a street (at the corner, and with the lights, of course), is there a button for you to push to activate the pedestrian signal? (Ahem. Betty, since your town has only five stoplights, this might not apply to you.)

For many years, your only choice would be a little, metal button that wouldn't exactly move when you pushed it, so you were never entirely sure if it worked or not, so you pushed it again. Note: this does not apply to those people who live by the triumph of hope over experience and think that pushing the button more often will make the light change earlier. (These are the same people that think creeping their cars forward will make the light turn green sooner.)

A few years ago, I noticed that some of the buttons were replaced by larger (about 1.5" diameter) curved disks. I presume these are more operable by people who, for whatever reason, can not push the smaller buttons. So far, my experiences with these are entirely favorable; they do noticeably depress when pushed and leave me with the comfort of knowing they work.

Yesterday, I encountered the new generation of buttons, and it's not a button at all. There is a sensor of some sort, surrounded by a small (<1 cm diameter) metal ring. I couldn't tell whether blocking the sensor or touching the ring was what activated it, but it beeped to let me know I was acknowledged. (How sad is it that I enjoyed the affirmation I got from a pedestrian crossing button?) Now the beep might not be audible for people with hearing loss in the higher frequencies, or if traffic is passing by, but it worked, and that's what counts.

Incidentally, while doing a web search to see if I could find pictures of the buttons I discussed. I was amused by this link, which describes pedestrian, pelican, puffin, and toucan crossings.

Well, this post is done. "Elelator go down the hoooole."