The Worst Thing

I can juggle fairly well. I’m not ready to do so with knives or running chainsaws, but I’m a firm go with apples or oranges. While thinking about this, I suddenly switched to considering things I am not very good at. As you might have already guessed, that’s a pretty robust list.

Let’s look at a few examples.

We can start with the fact that I’m not especially skilled at dressing myself appropriately. I’m not good at stacking the pots and pans away. Things get a little tippy within my haphazard heaps. Also, in a general sense, the “unable to walk and chew gum at the same time” applies to me. Twisting wrenches on cars has always been a dark shadow.

Then I tried to drill down to the thing I’m absolutely the worst at. Well, that’s pretty easy. I came up with caulking around bathroom fixtures with white silicone. I’m no good. Invariably, I begin by applying too little caulk, which is immediately followed by applying way too much. Then I bring out the snowplow to try to remove the excess caulk. By the time I’m done, my hands, clothes, and the entire bathroom are smeared with sticky caulking.

And, no, I’m not good at cleaning caulking up.

—Mitchell Hegman