I use a shorthand function to avoid having to type let x = document.getElementById('myId'); every time I want a reference to an element on the page:

function element(id) {
    return document.getElementById(id);
}

Now I can just use the much simpler:

let x = element("id");

Today, by accident, I did this:

let x = element("id").value;

And it worked, and actually contained the value of the HTML element "id".

But my element() function doesn't provide a .value property. It simply returns a reference to an element.

It should have caused an error of some type. Why didn't it? Or why did it work?