The Things We Leave Behind

By Ricky Fitzpatrick for The Creative South

My kids gave me a copy of the new Farmer’s Almanac for Christmas. And in it was an article about the growing concern over Space Junk. That’s the thousands (maybe millions) of pieces of manmade debris, floating around the earth, up in space.

After reading it, I’m convinced, absolutely convinced… that the problem of space junk started with a Southerner.

Not maliciously. Not recklessly. Just, instinctively.

Some early Southern astronaut, floating around up there with more courage than sense, cracked open a Coke, took a swig, looked out the window of the lunar module, and thought, I wonder if I could hit that thing.

And before Mission Control could clear its throat, a half-empty bottle was sailing through space, tumbling end over end, aimed loosely at a passing asteroid.

That’s how it starts.

Nobody means to litter the heavens. But next thing you know, there are cans drifting by. Slim Jim wrappers. Cigarette butts. A bald tire. A moon rover that won’t crank. A neat stack of old boards somebody planned to build a satellite with one day, once they got around to it.

The Almanac even says there are globs of frozen urine zipping around up there.

Which is unsettling.

When I was a kid, somebody once threw an apple out of a moving car and hit me square in the back of the head. I remember standing there stunned, holding the apple like it had personally betrayed me. But I can’t imagine getting clocked by a urine ice cube traveling at orbital speed.

That’s a thought that’ll keep you humble.

But if you look at Earth’s orbit the way a Southerner would look at a piece of property, it starts to make sense. NASA didn’t trash space. They just… filled the yard.

Stuff we’re going to use later. Stuff we dropped while we were busy. Stuff that was handy at the time and seemed worth keeping.

That’s not the sign of a messy child. That’s the sign of a busy mind.

Down here, we call that being in the middle of something.

Anybody who’s ever walked into a Southern yard, garage, or spare bedroom knows the look. Nothing’s been thrown away. Everything has a purpose. It’s just waiting its turn.

But eventually, somebody’s mama is going to stand in the doorway, plant her feet, and declare, “That’s enough of this foolishness.”

And that’s when the cleanup begins.

Which is exactly when NASA will come south of the Mason-Dixon and ask us to save the day, as we so often do.

Now, let’s be clear, we probably won’t remove the space junk. That would be wasteful. Instead, we’ll organize it.

Which is just another word for rearranging our junk into neat little piles. And this is a Southern specialty.

I can spend an entire day in our junk room “cleaning” and somehow double the usable space without getting rid of a single thing. I don’t throw away things, per se. I improve the flow.

And when I’m done, it looks like progress.

But here’s the truth we all learn sooner or later: the things you leave behind have a way of coming back around. Sometimes gently. Sometimes at orbital velocity.

Eventually, you have to deal with them. And maybe in that, we find a wisdom worth carrying forward.

Go explore. Dream big. Shoot for the stars.

Just don’t forget to clean up after yourself.