M: 9/23/02

Work Diary, 9/23/02

I have not pressed my own clothes since the age of nineteen, when my
friend's mother's iron left a burn mark on my favorite white shirt and
I gave up the practice for good. I used to take things to the dry
cleaner, or beg my friend, Nola, to do it. She has her ironing board in
a tiny basement room that would be the perfect setting for one of those
slasher/serial killer movies.

Alas, my partner decided that the dry cleaner was ruining his shirts. I
say "his" because I wear dress shirts only four or five times a year.
They never fit, the necks choke me, and they get worn whether they're
ironed or not.

What to do? I hate wearing that wrinkle-free miracle, polyester, which
I actually made once in high school chemistry. The final product was a
creepy, stringy spider web of smelly poly-strands that ruined my
beaker. We spun it on glass rods and, after it dried, it resembled an
alien cocoon filled with lumpy eggs. Not pretty.

I'm suspicious of people who iron their own clothes. Where do they find
the time? Doesn't ironing a week's worth of outfits interfere with,
say, reading a good book? And how different does a shirt really look
if, instead of pressing it, you spritz it with water and throw it in a
hot dryer?

Then, of course, there's the final absurdity: Ironing one's bedclothes.
There's no commenting on such a thing. I'm lucky to wash my bedclothes
once every two weeks; pressing them would send me over the edge.

At any rate, about two months I went to one of those mega-marts and
bought a new iron. My partner was in charge of getting a new pad for
the rickety old ironing board given to us by a friend. The new iron has
a handy steaming device, allowing the user to simply pass the steam
over clothing, which in turn magically straightens itself out and is
ready to wear. The woman on the box was doing just that while holding
her baby at the same time, which might be alarming until you looked
closely at the blouse she was steaming. Anyone who would wear such a
hideous shade of fuchsia is bound to place her infant in danger. The
steaming function seems too good to be true, but I wouldn't know. I
haven't turned the iron on yet; it's sitting on the board, gathering
dust. We have been washing our ironable shirts and hanging them from
the hot water pipes above the clothes washer, but apparently our zeal
ends there.

We will get to it eventually. Of that, I'm sure, if only because the
laundry room is beginning to look like a cave of many-colors. But I
will resist until the bitter end, or until we reach a tax bracket that
will allow us to hire a maid.

Or maybe not. How does the saying go? "I wouldn't wish that on my worst
enemy?" That's pretty much how I feel about ironing.