Things You Can’t Put Your Hands On (And Why They Don’t Trust You Back)

By Mark Morgan

www.markmorganbooks.com

I been thinkin’ lately about how many important things in life we’ve decided no longer need to be touched.

Not held.Not weighed in your hand.Not set down on the tailgate so you can look at it sideways and decide if it’s worth keepin’.

They tell me my life’s work is now “in the cloud.”

Now I’ve lived in Scott County long enough to know a cloud when I see one. I’ve watched ‘em pile up over Lake Hinkle, turn the water the color of weak coffee, and soak you clean through even when the forecast swore you’d be fine.

But I ain’t never seen one that could hold a man’s stories.

Still, that’s where they say everything lives now — words, pictures, ideas, receipts, and apparently common sense. All floatin’ around somewhere over yonder, supervised by a password I already forgot.

Used to be, if somethin’ went missing, you could at least hunt for it. Check the shop. Check the truck. Check behind the seat where everything eventually ends up. You might not find it, but you’d feel like you tried.

Now you click a button and a computer looks back at you like a cow starin’ at a new gate and says, “Error.”

That’s the whole explanation.

Same sort of foolishness has crept into huntin’. I heard tell of folks usin’ drones to scout deer now. Little whirrin’ saucers buzzin’ around the timber like they got lost on the way to a parade.

Now don’t misunderstand me — I ain’t against improvement. But I’ve yet to meet a drone that could read a trail, mind the wind, or know when to sit down and shut up.

A good dog, though — he’s got a nose that’ll tell the truth even when the woods are lyin’. He don’t need chargerin’. He don’t freeze up. And when he finds what he’s lookin’ for, he don’t send you a notification — he lets you know in a language older than excuses.

Comparin’ a drone to a hound is like comparin’ a sack of nails to a handshake. One’s useful, sure, but the other actually means somethin’.

And don’t get me started on learnin’ how to fix things.

These days, a leaky pipe sends folks straight to YouTube. They’ll stand there watchin’ a stranger in clean jeans explain how simple it is, while water’s runnin’ down their arm and puddlin’ on the floor like it’s fixin’ to register to vote.

Grandpa never filmed a thing in his life.

He just handed you a wrench and said, “Don’t force it unless you mean it.” If it didn’t work, he’d study it a minute, scratch his chin, and mutter somethin’ that sounded like advice but might’ve been a warning.

That kind of knowledge sticks. It don’t buffer. And it don’t vanish when the power goes out.

I reckon we’ve traded a lot of solid things for clever ones. Swapped heft for convenience. Trusted things that can’t be kicked, trained, or chased down when they act up.

And a man can’t help feel a little uneasy about it — like a screen door on a submarine — knowin’ most of what matters now lives somewhere he can’t point to and somebody else controls.

Moral:If it won’t sit still, don’t smell right, and disappears without apologizin’, you might ought to keep one hand on somethin’ real.