When I was around 11 I got a black eye by walking into a closed door. It was a dark night and I was sleeping over at my friend Candy’s house. I tried to make a trip to the toilet without turning on a light and whammed into a door that was rarely closed.

People asked me about my shiner and I told them what happened. Most of them looked at me a little sideways, with a skeptical cast to their eyes. I later learned that walking into a door is the standard white lie about a black eye; it’s never the way the bruise occurs but it’s offered to avoid societal disdain.

Which raises my three questions: Have you ever tried to slip on a banana peel? Shoot a wet bar of soap into the air by squeezing it? Start a fire with a cigarette?

If you have, you know these accomplishments are not easy. They are probably not common either.

To slip on a banana peel with any conviction, the peel must be fresh, applied to the floor inside-down, and symmetrically spread like a yellow-petaled flower. And the placement of the foot-that-will-slip must be precise.

To shoot the soap you have to acquire just the right amount of wetness and apply the optimum degree of hand pressure.

And the fire thing? I have no doubt that many house- and wildfires are started with unextinguished cigarettes. I understand a smolder. But I’ve tried to ignite a number of camp fires and barbecues in my time, and using a cigarette is not effective.