My old printer died. Really. It told me so. The printer left a sad note on its little screen. Printer years are fewer than dog years.

I got a new printer. It is clever. It connected to WiFi without asking for a password. Should I be concerned?

It also prints. It is impressive at printing diagnostics about itself. I was confident that it could print things that I wanted duplicated from screen to paper.

It did. I sent a not-so-bad landscape photograph to the machine. The machine gave me a stunning image about the size of a postage stamp. On a large piece of paper.

I know we can be happy together. Today I grasped that was a not-printed agreement that the printer is in charge while my charge is to click “Print”

Tomorrow I will download the manual, a kind of prenup.