It's one of those mornings. It's an "unclever" morning. On unclever mornings, I'm tragically short of cleverness. I still have trace amounts of cleverness lodged in the corner of my brain, but it's buried under a layer of befuddlement. And it's green.

I was clever enough to turn the key in the ignition this morning, but uncleverness asserted itself again. I was surprised to discover that shifting to "D" will not allow me to back out of my parking spot.

I blame TV. In car chase scenes, they just don't spend enough time explaining the intricacies of the automatic transmission. I watch TV for hours on end, looking for help with this, but the TV people would rather do a bit about a purple polar bear in Argentina than tell me something useful. Like, "Move the lever to 'R' before backing up" or "Don't put vinegar in your eye".

Oh, sure, after I rinsed out my eye, I'd learned my lesson. But they could have warned me.

The elevator presents a problem on unclever days. Every day for over two years, I've gone to the sixth floor. There are two buttons in the lobby. I pushed the wrong one. You'd think that at my age, I would have figured out how to operate an elevator.

A cup of coffee should help. I'll just pay a visit to the vending machine and dial up some Hawaiian blend. The pineapple lends a nice fruity touch that offsets the bitterness, but I tend to pick out the ham floaties. And I'll be fine after I put a touch of vinegar in my eye—

No. I forgot. That's not a good idea. Maybe something like sugar or salt would work better. That's the spirit of unclever experimentation that often leads to new discoveries.