Jasper Dunglewidth. My parents named me Jasper Dunglewidth... how about that? Weird, right? But it fits me. It fits me, because it doesn't fit and I don't really fit either.

Growing up (Midwest/US in the 70s) I was pretty normal. Maybe average is a better term for what I was. Got good-enough grades, good-enough looking, was a good-enough friend to my small group, and generally - try as I might to buck the trend - just did the good-enough version of whatever it was that I was into at the time. Eventually, that middle-ness was so all-consuming that my entire personhood fell into the steepest middle part of the personhood bell curve. Mediocrity wasn't so much my identity as it just so pervaded my constitution that it was impossible to note much of anything. Maybe that in itself is notable?

Anyway, things progressed along that un-notable timeline for years. Dating was a fruitless chore (probably more so for those poor women), most friends paired off and launched their adult lives, college wasn't on my radar for reasons that should be clear by now, and retail work was the sort of gooey center I just fell into. Haven't really budged since. Been with S-Mart now for something like 15 years at this point. About 5 years ago (so maybe 1990, roughly), things started getting interesting. Even weird maybe, but in the flatline pulse that is my life, weirdly interesting registers as a staggeringly sharp and lonely peak.

So, near as I can tell, it really started when my store (S-Mart #1179) switched from credit card imprinters to these fancy new point-of-sale (POS [hehe]) machines. The tech team they sent in (talkin' up an "interconnected" & "cashless" future), gave all us floor staff a pretty painful 3-day "how-to" demo for how we were supposed to use everything. OK, fine I thought... I'll figure it out well-enough. Well... I surprised myself.

They nerds said they'd never seen anything like it. Calls to corporate were made, corporate called more nerds, additional backup-nerds deployed to our location to figure out what was going so wrong. From what they told me, it seemed that one terminal was somehow completely overloading the machines they had in the back to the point that they in turn crashed and took all the data they had in them. I suggested that the stuff wasn't ready for prime-time, but it didn't seem like they were receptive to that conclusion. The nerd brigade ran diagnostics, checked power feeds, ran tests galore... all of which passed with flying colors. Thinking it might be user error, they has us one-by-one, run through a mock transaction just like they showed us. The system worked flawlessly for Dianne, Craig, Tony, etc.. Everything was smooth sailing until it was my turn.

The green screen blinked to life, I entered my associate ID, scanned my first item, and *POP*, "hmm... that didn't sound right". Next thing I know, smoke was billowing out of the control room they'd set up in the back and a few minutes later a fire crew was on site putting out an electrical fire. Did some damage to the new Winter wear shipment I'd just inventoried too. Long story short, they never really figured out what I did wrong, but it was decided that I shouldn't mess with the new, expensive tech anymore. Worked out for me as it turns out, they made me a shift supervisor (in no small part due to my years of faithful service, I'm sure). Fail up as they say... All that was my first brush with, and indication that technology and I didn't get along. I know that's a midwestern trope, but how many of those people literally start fires when they interact with a computer?

Fast forward a couple years, and weird shit just starts stacking up. All somehow involving tech stuff. A new projection TV one of my few remaining friends brought me over to show off started mysteriously going on the fritz, CD players would comically skip when I came around and worst of all, I was seemingly individually banned from having a working cell phone experience (shame, I was actually excited about that one). At the time, I mostly shrugged it off as familiarly bad coincidence, but I also started connecting the dots.

Zoom ahead to present day and I think I've figured it out. Well... no, that's an overreach. I have a working theory, but i have no idea how rooted in reality it is (scientific or otherwise). Either way, here it is: I've done some reading on "solid-state" electronics (i.e. the type used in the devices I've had my troubling relationship with) and have come to some basic conclusions.
First, these machines work by talking in a very simple language. That language is called binary. Binary code is comprised of 2 numbers; basically a numeric representation of an on state and an off state. Following so far? Me neither, really. Anyway, here's my kind of existentially soul-crushing second conclusion: I am constitutionally incompatible with binary machines on account of my all-consuming middle-state-ness. I know, I know... I sound like the kid who just ate too many shrooms and started thinking about the meaning of life, but bear with me, this is the only workable theory I've got. Maybe its the way I physically interact with the world, but maybe its something deeper, something less kinetic. I've begun to see myself as exuding a sort of middle-state energy that radiates off of me like a fucked up piece of kryptonite or something.

I obviously don't fully-grasp the science (obviously), but I do get constant reminders of how its manifesting in my life, physics be damned. I already told you about the run-of-the-mill encounters I've had personally, but what I haven't yet told you is how I'm thinking about using this blursed gift to do something good. To maybe even - through the focused application of my mediocrity - ascend past that mediocrity. How weird is that sentence?

So, what that's looking like these days: I happened to be in a bank a few months ago depositing that week's paycheck. My turn with the teller comes when I hear doors of the bank violently bang open and the high-pitched squeak of cross-trainers on tile floor. I turn around and see several ski mask-clad fellas yelling at customers to "get on the ground" and then turn their focus to the tellers to shout "empty your drawers". Saving for the brief moment I wondered if they got the ski masks from my store, I immediately comply in time to have the same thought about their fresh white cross-trainers as my face is pressed to the ground. From there, the robbery went kind of how you'd think robberies go. Luckily, I didn't see any weapons, and nobody got hurt, but the damndest thing happened on their way out. One of the trio was barking at his cell phone, talking about "getting Paul to meet them out front with the car", only its clearly not working and they eventually just run out of the bank and down the street on foot. Sadly, it would seem my "power" presumably messed with the bank's alarm, but in the end, the audible that the crew was forced to call led to their downfall with the cops picking them up about three blocks away. The news mentioned that they were found in a residential backyard all tucked in to a Fischer-Price plastic igloo which I found amusing on a personal level.

So that's where I'm at. I know I have this... thing. Is it a power? Like a super power? It feels like maybe the opposite, but its what I have. So far its been another disappointing development in a life marked by equally disappointing outcomes, but I'm starting to feel different this time.