My day starts out like any other––I wake up. That's where the similarities between my life, and the life of those who will forever be more graceful than me, end.
You see, I have impaired vision (and I'm short, but that doesn't technically count as an impairment), so I wear glasses. If I decided to take pity on my future self and carefully place them on my nightstand the night before, it's all well and good.
If I decided that I hate myself, or if I convinced myself that I'd remember where I put my glasses in the morning, it is neither well nor is it good. Because then, I'm aimlessly walking around with only the light coming through the closed blinds to guide me. Most of the time, I bump into walls.
On a good day, I make it to my glasses without a hitch.
As my vision goes from 144p to HD, I begin to wonder what I'm going to wear today. I look through my closet and various other spots in my room where I carelessly tossed something I was too tired to properly put away.
This is another challenge that awaits a klutz: picking an outfit that doesn't sport a single obvious stain. We're messy eaters. We spill things, we leave crumbs, we rip things. Of course, we try to tackle each one of those problems as soon as they appear and leave the clothes so clean and fresh looking that would nobody even notices, but if we were just graceful to begin with, it wouldn't even be an issue.
I pick out jeans and a t-shirt. That's the other thing about being a klutz, we like to play it safe.
Nothing that can get caught, ride up or down, nothing that can fall off or rip easily. I can bet you that at least one of those things happens once a day with an outfit that's a little fancier.
Next comes the shower. It goes smoothly, despite my horrifying flashback to The Shower Curtain Incident of 2011, in which I slipped on a bar of soap, proceeded to have the shower curtain rod fall on my head and get tangled in the curtain itself.
After that, it's time to style my hair, but not with a straightener; not after the Flat Iron Incident of 2018. I wince at the burn mark on my foot, the pain still fresh in my mind.
I prepare my lunch and snacks for the day. Nothing that can create a mess, of course. Nothing that requires toasting, baking, frying, grilling, or any heat at all. I have several tiny battle scars to remind me of that.
After what seems to be a fairly average morning for a Klutz, I'm out the door.
The day goes rather smoothly––or what's smooth according to my definition. I only spill a little bit of water.
My classmate, now used to the number of times I drop my stationary, no longer gets aggravated the fourth or fifth time he has to reach for it and hand it over.
My friends laugh at my latest clumsy mishap and remind me to be careful. They think their advice falls on deaf ears, but my ears are as alert as ever; my hand-eye coordination just isn't up to par. They don't understand that, but I don't mind. More often, than not, I don't understand it either.
It's not my fault that common household appliances mark me as their enemy and plan attacks against me. To top it all off, I don't get a single side-eye for bumping into someone because for once, I expertly weave myself through the throngs of people traveling in the same direction as me.
Eventually, my day comes to a ceremonious end.
There's only one tiny spill at dinner, and nobody even notices. Or at least they pretended not to. When it's time to go to bed, I place my glasses on my nightstand, not knowing they will get knocked over in the middle of the night and I will spend most of the next morning looking for them.
I think about my day, satisfied with its outcome. It's not as if my day is worse overall when the clumsy meter reaches red. It's something I've learned to not only live with but to embrace.
Besides, if I don't tell funny stories, like the Grocery Store Clorox Wipe Pyramid Incident of 2009, who will?
