Touch, Tap

I touch eggs to the edge of the sink before I crack them. Just a brief, light touch to get the feel for where the egg and the sink will meet before I tap with just the right amount of force to get me one step closer to breakfast: touch, then tap. I sometimes do the same thing when I’m using an axe (to chop wood, not eggs): a slow swing with a gentle stop at the target, then a full swing. Less often these days, I might make a quick little squiggle in the air with a pen just above the surface of a paper document before I actually sign.

I don’t know exactly how I started doing any of these things, but I assume that I picked them up from watching someone else. They’re not the sort of thing you’d learn in school.

These movements before the real movements are not quite practice or dry runs, even though they improve our performance. They are not quite simulations, even though they give us information about the movement, the endpoint and the workspace. They are quick calibrations of the system formed by our hand, eye and tool (or egg).

The movements we calibrate tend to be percussive or explosive and directed outward; not pulling movements that bring the action closer to us. Pulling the starter rope on a snowthrower doesn’t need a practice movement.

And we don’t do a dry run of pulling on our socks. We do it with movements that count. Movements that we might do only once, or a few times but want to do efficiently; otherwise why waste the time? Touching the egg to the sink saves me the cleanup of an egg that was smashed instead of just cracked. The slow-motion, targeted swing of the axe saves me the embarrassment of missing the tree. (The squiggle-in-the-air with a pen is actually a combination of a warm-up and trying to determine exactly how energetic I can be, given the microscopic space I have to put my untamable signature in.)

Touch—when you want to be sure—then tap.

It’s feedback.

It’s “feel that”.