Why is Tonks clumbsy?

[Lindsay W.]

No: HPFGUIDX 111600

Hi, I'm Lawless.  Long time lurker, first time poster.  I thought I'd bring 
something up, perhaps you all already have discussed this to great length 
before I signed up for the group, maybe not.  :)

Tonks.  She's clumsy, we know this.  In practically every scene where we 
see Tonks, she's clumsy.  It's overly exagerrated, to a point.  Why?  Yes, 
she may be a great spy with her Metamorphagus abilities, but she can't walk 
down the hall without tripping over something.  When I first read OotP, my 
questions regarding Tonks were - WHY is she in the Aurory if she's liable 
to fall over all the time?  Do her spying abilities so outweigh the risks 
of her tripping over something and blowing an operation by the 
out-of-characterness of it?

I couldn't justify "she's just that good" when faced with the risks.  But 
as I revisited this connuudrum later on, an interesting question came to 
mind - WHY is Tonks clumby?

She's a Metamorphagus...in theory (it would seem obvious to me, at least) 
she should be able to change her body so that it "feels" right, 
correct?  The correct height, correct build...everything.  So why doesn't 
she? Barring a "it just doesn't work like that" explaination.

Maybe Tonks as we know her...is a disguise.  OR...Tonks spends so much time 
in disguise that she can't easily adjust to her "original" body.

Bear with me, here, because I go out on a limb.  Men and women have 
different centers of balance.  If you suddenly turned a man into a woman, 
he would, theoretically, have to get used to the lower center of balance, 
and vice-versa.  Perhaps the reason for her clumbsiness is:

A) She's "really" a he and has a hard time adjusting to the female center 
of balance.

or

B) She is a she, but spends a majority of her time as a he, so that when 
she finally becomes a female again, she has an extremely hard time getting 
used to it, again.

Now, I /want/ to strike out B because she mentioned that she was clumsy in 
her Auror tests.  But that could always be a cover-up.  B still has a 
problem, though, because she would still be clumsy in her male "spy" body 
for a while as she readjusts again.  So instead of one-clumsy form, 
one-not we see in example A, we have two clumsy Tonks in example B.

So yes, I would lean towards A being an explaination, over B.

Now, I don't bring up these theories of Tonks in a sense that she's 
ESE!Tonks hiding this from the Order.  I don't doubt Tonks's loyalties, but 
that clumbsiness has been nagging me greatly.

And these are all far-out guesses as to WHY Tonks is "really" male, with no 
real canon backup, rather than her preference to her masculine surname over 
her first name, and her unexplained clumbsiness.

Nymphadora /could/ be a fake name - she was burned from the Black Family 
Tree, so we can only go on the Order's word, and I don't put it past them 
to be...deceptive.  Or Nymphadora could be her real name - male children 
have been named stranger things.  Or...the fact that she is a male was 
hidden from the Wizarding World, and she was trained early on to hide it, 
for whatever reason.

Maybe because...*shifty glance around* *whispers* 
Tonksisthehalfbloodprince. *whistles*

Any thoughts to my Tonks-is-a-guy theory?  Ignoring that last HBP-crazed 
bit, though.  It's the summer heat, I swear!

...although she /is/ half-blood, and we can't REALLY know her gender...or 
her age, for that matter (she could really be OldMan!Tonks)...it could all 
be a lie...

--Lawless