I’ve been thinking about the Dunning-Kruger effect, and I’m pretty sure I’m an expert on it.

For those of you that don’t know, the Dunning-Kruger effect is the idea people often overestimate how competent they are.

This explains why I was most self-assured at the age of 16, when I believed I knew everything about politics, relationships, and how to do laundry (answer: get Mom to do it).

In the years since, I’ve mastered the art of being slightly wrong with absolute confidence. I consider this failing upward.

This is how I once assembled a bookshelf without reading the instructions.

Okay, so the instructions were actually a reasonable four pages in length, complete with diagrams and a phone number to call if I needed help.

But whoever wrote them obviously assumed I’d need significant assistance to construct a simple frame for the complete works of Alexandre Dumas, Thomas Hardy, and Dav Pilkey.

I just can’t take that kind of........

© The Saratogian