Incredibly Simple Things That Made Me Feel Like a Complete Buffoon

Ken Taro
4 min readOct 11, 2023

Have these common contraptions fooled you as well?

A particularly unflattering picture of the author with a caption that says “ken.exe has stopped working.”
A particularly unflattering picture of me sitting on a bench in San Francisco.

I actually don’t particularly consider myself an intelligent person, but some of the items on this list are definitely things I should have no problem with. Alas, they have caused, and continue to cause, plenty of confusion and angst.

Packaging Tape

Someone using a packaging tape dispenser to seal a parcel in bubble wrap.
Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-white-and-black-vr-goggles-4568701/

When it’s just me and the roll of tape, we are completely in tune. If you bring a handle into the equation, it’s game over (for me).

USB anything

USB stick
Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash

When you plug in a USB, there is theoretically a 50/50 chance of inserting it correctly the first time, right? Well, not for me. I swear I have a 90% failure rate on the first try.

Pickle Jar

Several pickle jars.
Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash

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Ken Taro

Writer, satirist, and humorist. You can find my best work on my mom’s refrigerator.