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Locational Klutz

For the most part, I'm fairly coordinated. I'm not an Olympic level anything, but I'm not scared to step on a basketball court or wield a hammer in my back yard. I think the funniest way anyone has ever described this was, "you were one of those kids that sprinted outside for recess as fast as possible, weren't you?" And heck, that person was right. I was one of those kids.

Basically, I'm lucky to have that going for me. Well, most of the time. For whatever reason, there is one place that seems to completely undo that ability in me. And boy, when it goes wrong, do some very embarrassing things happen.

The first time, I was over at my friend's place when she was assembling some furniture she'd ordered. It was one of those shoe rack things, so it wasn't meant to be super complicated. Seeing as how I wasn't doing anything else (we were waiting for her husband and another friend of ours to come over), I started to help. The diagram and the Engrish instructions weren't very helpful, but I figured out how to put it together.

I did, however, mess up one small detail. This thing didn't have hinges, it had ball-and-socket type connections (like your shoulder) on each end of the doors that effectively let those doors open and close. And the joints had two pieces that looked like they could fit there: a brass piece and a plastic piece. Not giving it much thought, I used the plastic ones. Wrong choice. By the time we finished, the whole thing was functional, but we realized that if someone looked really closely, the plastic joints looked wrong.

I swore at myself. Then I realized that fixing the mistake would require undoing three-fourths of the work. I swore at myself some more. To make matters worse, the second friend had showed up and she let me have it. I believe the phrase "next time don't do anything until I show up" was thrown about. I was kicking myself for most of the evening.

If that had been the worst of it, though, I would have simply laughed it off. No, I was back there on a completely unrelated occasion when I was reminded of my screw up. We were watching basketball in their theater (e.g., man cave), eating all sorts of unhealthy food and drinking. Realizing that we didn't have any cup holders or anything, I had kept an eye on my beer. However, someone offered up some chips and salsa, and the only central location for everyone was on the carpeted floor. Sitting down, I looked around for somewhere to put my beer. The carpet was pretty thick, so I figured it would hold my beer up right if I was careful. I tentatively placed it down, and it seemed to hold. Happy with my solution, I turned away to indulge in the chips and salsa.

Did I mention that this was a fairly thick carpet? This was completely-disguise-the-sound-of-a-beer-bottle-falling-over type of thick. I turned back to my beer a few seconds later, and there was a nice puddle forming on top of the carpet. I quickly righted the bottle and cleaned up what I could, but I still felt like a goof ball. Of course, it didn't help that it was a thick carpet, so that it had seeped in. Luckily it was a bathroom rug, which was meant to deal with moisture. Still, I spent quite a while helping to undo the damage I had caused. Again, I was kicking myself for a while after that.

After these incidents, though, I've decided that whatever is in those walls is my kryptonite. I'm going to have to be super careful the next time I go over there, lest I burn down the house or something.

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