TL;DR

Is this you?

Cut to a pair of hands clawing at a roll of saran wrap, trying to find some purchase on the cylinder.

Has this ever happened to you?

Cut to a pair of hands haplessly attempting to form hamburgers out of cold beef.

I think we’ve all had enough of this!

Cut to a man grasping at the various parts of a large gym exercise machine. Any attempt to grab two parts at a time causes a third to inexplicably swing out of reach. The man stands up and stomps out of frame.

We’ve never met, but it’s almost a certainty that you know me. Any time you’re up late at night flicking through the detritus that is late night TV, you’ve seen me. B-list celebrity has beens, One-take testimonials from honest hard-working Americans, non-stop narration and repetition for hours at a time. And the black and white footage, always of the fumbler, the one who can’t get anything right.

I’ve been clumsy for as long as I can remember. Clumsy may not even be the correct word. Useless might be more accurate. There is almost nothing man-made that I can use with any competency. Knives and forks are bad enough. Can openers, automobiles? Forget it. It’s been this bad for as long as I can remember. It took a long time to work it out, to live a life where I nearly never had to end up looking foolish. Don’t eat toast, cereal is considerably less likely to go wrong. Approach every situation from the standpoint that if it requires any more than three distinct steps, you will probably look stupid doing it. It’s not like I don’t know how to operate any of these things. I could tell you how to microwave a sandwich or program your VCR, I just can’t do them. Suddenly I sweat and my fingers slip and I get frustrated after only two or three seconds. It stops being worth it even to try.

The only thing that I can really handle is a pencil, so I got an internship out of school with a company started by one of the town’s inventors. They had me carrying coffee and scrawling notes and running back and forth, and for quite awhile, everything went pretty well. I got to know most of the rest of the staff, met my first girlfriend there, started to feel normal.

A few years ago the producers wanted me to put together the set for an infomercial shoot. Right there, on camera, I fumbled with a set piece (a countertop dish rack, if I recall correctly), faltered, dropped it, caught a foot on a cable, tripped, threw up my arms and walked off the set. The director had been watching and he called me over. He explained to me that he needed some footage of someone looking frustrated with everyday tasks and that if I could reproduce what I just did the job was mine. They wouldn’t have to show my face or anything and it would pay better than what I was doing.

I shrugged and agreed to, not realizing what I was getting into. What started as a one-time thing became a mainstay, first for our products and then for our competitors too. Focus groups lured in to talk about the footage by free pizza and a ‘studio tour’ continually commented on the fumbler footage. People seem to know it’s authentic, and maybe it’s just a little comforting to see someone that much less capable.

Things changed quickly. I was no longer struggling to pay my bills, but the fame was confusing. Nina, the aforementioned girlfriend, left me after only a few weeks. She hated having to do everything for me and  work every night was just a constant reminder of everything that she found frustrating about me.

We’ve all had trouble doing this.

Cut to a pair of disembodied hands pulling at a bra strap. They slip on the clasp, which strikes its owner square in the middle of her back. She gets up, furious, grabs a shirt and pair of shoes, and walks out of frame.

Now I have nothing but my work, work that reminds me every moment of every day what I am. My legacy will be my mistakes, every insomniac, young mother and speed freak that cracks a smile at my five seconds of fame. Sometimes, on a really good day, the idea that I might be comforting some of the people that need it most is enough to get me through the day. Part of nearly every contract is a free unit of whatever it is they’re selling for that taping. I have a house full of them now, grim trophies to directionless human efficiency. Nearly every one is more complex than the thing they’re supposed to replace, and aside from a garlic press that sits on my kitchen counter (on a bad day I like to sit there and press garlic for hours on end, it’s the one thing I can do non-stop without any mistakes) I can’t use a blessed one of them. My abs have never been blasted, my knives are dull, burgers misshapen, onions hacked into crude cubes, smoothies lumpy, stovetop greasy.

But at least I’ve got the Clovemaster.