Being a klutz

Klutziness is a curse. Your life basically transforms into a slapstick comedy with the laughter tracks echoing through it for real. As a klutz myself, days that do not offer any complementary scratches or bruises are a rare case.

As you can see, we are born with the innate ability to knock ourselves out by walking into a door that is very much visible to the naked eye. Our motor neurons really need to sort out their priorities and hence, we are not exactly the embodiment of grace. Plus, life is a daily struggle, thanks to the table leg lurking in the corner.

Mornings are malicious and waking up is a highly calculated risk. You can't just roll out of bed with all the sass as a world of peril awaits outside. I'm pretty sure for us klutz, the gravitational pull between random harmless objects and ourselves is amplified to the extent that one starts to get scared of furniture. For instance, table legs, like I mentioned earlier, usually have an inexplicable and twisted attraction to our toes. Let's just say, stubbed toes are our best friend.

Showers are scarier than in the scenes of the movie Psycho. It's slippery and life threatening. An average klutz will usually slip twice before fully regaining balance. But then the shampoo will seep into their eyes somehow and before you know it, they are screaming in agony in a world of dark. And for a klutz who can't see, it usually spells disaster.

Friends usually get used to our tripping and stumbling adventures. I even came up with a unit to glorify klutziness – FPM (falls per minute). The higher FPM a klutz has, the more prepared their friends should be, to either catch them from falling or to laugh at them.

Socialising nowadays requires eating out and that translates to spilling some sort of sauce or drink on clothes. Elegant, huh? Imagine the exact scenario on a first date. Even if you successfully manage to finish your food without making a fool out of yourself, you will surely trip on your way out. But on the bright side, your inability to manoeuvre yourself properly can be a true test of love and friendship.

Parents are not exactly proud of this though. Think of a typical Bengali dawat with all your relatives present and you manage to spill water on the food. Your parents will not even participate in the "let's compare our kids now" game post-lunch. How sad is that?

You would think that being on one's bed finally after a long, dreadful day would provide some respite, but no. Consider my case for instance, as I scroll down my newsfeed while in bed, proud of having survived the day, my phone will go into ninja mode out of the blue and attack my face. C'est la vie, I guess.

The little fights we have to put up with everyday probably mean that we will be great achievers in life. As they say, one falls a thousand times before they can fly. But I cannot really end this on an inspirational note because I'm positive that if you are a klutz like I am, you would be falling and tripping. So, meticulously plan your day and movements, or life will throw you off your balance, quite literally.

Iqra suffers from wanderlust, dreams of discovering the Loch Ness Monster and occasionally complains about Economics. Tell her to get a life at iqra.kashmir53@gmail.com