The future today

Most days I hide in an old Victorian house on South Hill Street and see myself as some greying country lawyer, plying his trade, waiting for another call on the telephone. This is fiction since I sit in front of a computer screen all day and refrain from dictating my pleas and briefs to my secretary, who would not know how to take dictation, even if we wanted to give and take that way. The law changes everyday, like the evolution of germs and bacteria on a petri dish. But sitting in my cotton, button-down shirt, I can at least play the scene like Atticus Finch, in some North Alabama courtroom.

Today, however, I received quite a push into the 21st century. After meeting with three elderly black ladies to talk estates and probate and the leavings of memory, I was sitting in my office, reading a book about Andrew Jackson, when my phone rang. It was a lady in Pennsylvania, who calls me from time to time to solicit my aid in closing loans out on the country roads of West Middle Georgia.

And today was different. This time, my contact person wanted to know if I was prepared to close an e-loan, a loan without paper and pen. What this request entailed was bringing the closing procedure out of the piles and files of paper and bringing it forward to what is considered the future, which is loan closing on line on a computer, without printing out the paper or dealing with the words printed on a piece of paper.

So for two hours, I made myself available to the electronic box on my credenza, trying to educate myself and make my self a part of the electronic future of closing. At this point, I am prepared to drive to a small hamlet north of Columbus, and a little house, in which, on Monday morning around 8:00 o'clock a.m., I will join with two other citizens in the rising morning and we will enter the future. Or at least today.