Barnaby Butterfield's Breakfast Brouhaha

Barnaby Butterfield, a man whose grace was often mistaken for a gravitational anomaly, decided this particular Tuesday would be different. He would conquer breakfast. His first target: toast. He retrieved a slice of whole wheat, but as he leaned to pop it into the toaster, his elbow connected with a rogue banana, sending it soaring. The bread, startled by the aerial fruit, slipped from his grasp and landed face down in yesterday's coffee grounds. Undeterred, Barnaby grabbed another slice. This one made it into the toaster, but as he reached for the butter, the entire stick performed a daring escape from its wrapper, landing precisely, and with an audible *plop*, onto his freshly polished shoe. "Right," he muttered, wiping butter from his loafer with a dishtowel. "Coffee then." He wrestled with the coffee bag, spilling a fine dust of robust Arabica across the countertop, which he then, of course, tried to wipe with the butter-smeared dishtowel. The mug, once pristine, became a brown canvas of smeared grounds and yellow streaks. Finally, with a sigh that tasted faintly of frustration and burnt toast, he poured the hot water. Too much. The coffee frothed over the rim, cascading down the sides, just as Barnaby, distracted by the mini-waterfall, pivoted to avoid the banana's landing zone and promptly tripped over his own feet, executing a perfect face-plant into the now-puddling coffee, landing with a splash amidst the scattered coffee grounds and the buttered shoe. He lay there, a soggy monument to human ineptitude, a single piece of perfectly golden toast still popping defiantly from the toaster. "At least," he mumbled, a coffee-bean clinging to his eyebrow, "I'm consistent."