Saturday, July 19, 2003
There are exactly two household chores I actually enjoy doing. One is ironing and the other is going to the dump. This Saturday morning I am going to iron.
The place where I iron is called, not surprisingly, the ironing room. Slightly larger than a closet, the ironing room is located on the second floor of our 1920’s colonial-style house and looks out to the main road below. The real estate agent who sold us the house years ago had described it as a "telephone room," and there was in fact an old avocado green rotary phone somebody had left on the windowsill when we moved in. As if I could predict then that in a few years we would collectively own two cordless, and four mobile phones that would render the need for a telephone room obsolete, I staked my claim by parking the ironing board smack in the middle of the little room the first week of unpacking.
Ironing dress shirts is my forte. At peak performance, I can iron a shirt flawlessly in about three and a half minutes flat. I can’t even imagine since the time I got married twenty years ago until now, how many dress shirts I’ve ironed. Thousands...
Admittedly one of the stranger things I do while ironing is to envision an overhead video camera taping what would be equivalent to watching a professional sporting event on television, but a sporting event that requires the commentators to speak in a soft-spoken voice – much like golf. I am the Tiger Woods of ironing. I imagine two moderated whispers giving play-by-play commentary with respect to my intricate ironing finesse. Occasionally they also make reference to the inferior techniques of my inferior invisible competitors.
“Well, Larry,” starts the first moderator. “Notice how Anna is prepping the shirts today with the water squirt bottle. I think she is counting on the high humidity to give her just the right amount of dampness in the shirts because she is only giving each shirt a couple of squirts from her spray bottle.”
“That’s right Dave, because each time she has to re-fill that bottle with water to dampen the shirts, she loses precious time. I notice too that she is using a new starch product this year. The shirts come out crisp but not overly stiff.”
“Here she goes, Larry. Watch how she ques up each shirt. She has one of the most unusual sequences in the sport. Most people start with the sleeves, but Anna does the inside of the collar first.”
“Wow, Dave. No creases anywhere. She has ironed each section of this shirt flawlessly so far. This one is a tricky one too. The thinner cottons don’t seem to have much body and are harder to work with. But Anna is doing an absolutely phenomenal job here. And look how effortlessly she buttons the shirt. Every other one and then a quick lay-out on the ironing board so she can attack the sleeves. Like we pointed out earlier, Dave, unlike her other competitors, she does the sleeves last.”
After returning from a quick commercial break (for some environmentally friendly car of some sort), Dave and Larry comment on the expert folding job and final burst of steam administered around the collar area.
“Larry, that shirt is perfect. I think the judges will have to give that a nine or higher. You could package that shirt in cellophane and sell it in a department store as new!”
I also just daydream a lot while ironing. The iron and I become partners in our quest to smooth out the wrinkles at hand; the iron steams across the crinkled plane of another blue dress shirt, this one a pale sky blue, as my mind wanders across the folds and creases of my strange life. We flatten and press until the next time a cacophony of blue shirts make their way up to my little room.
The place where I iron is called, not surprisingly, the ironing room. Slightly larger than a closet, the ironing room is located on the second floor of our 1920’s colonial-style house and looks out to the main road below. The real estate agent who sold us the house years ago had described it as a "telephone room," and there was in fact an old avocado green rotary phone somebody had left on the windowsill when we moved in. As if I could predict then that in a few years we would collectively own two cordless, and four mobile phones that would render the need for a telephone room obsolete, I staked my claim by parking the ironing board smack in the middle of the little room the first week of unpacking.
Ironing dress shirts is my forte. At peak performance, I can iron a shirt flawlessly in about three and a half minutes flat. I can’t even imagine since the time I got married twenty years ago until now, how many dress shirts I’ve ironed. Thousands...
Admittedly one of the stranger things I do while ironing is to envision an overhead video camera taping what would be equivalent to watching a professional sporting event on television, but a sporting event that requires the commentators to speak in a soft-spoken voice – much like golf. I am the Tiger Woods of ironing. I imagine two moderated whispers giving play-by-play commentary with respect to my intricate ironing finesse. Occasionally they also make reference to the inferior techniques of my inferior invisible competitors.
“Well, Larry,” starts the first moderator. “Notice how Anna is prepping the shirts today with the water squirt bottle. I think she is counting on the high humidity to give her just the right amount of dampness in the shirts because she is only giving each shirt a couple of squirts from her spray bottle.”
“That’s right Dave, because each time she has to re-fill that bottle with water to dampen the shirts, she loses precious time. I notice too that she is using a new starch product this year. The shirts come out crisp but not overly stiff.”
“Here she goes, Larry. Watch how she ques up each shirt. She has one of the most unusual sequences in the sport. Most people start with the sleeves, but Anna does the inside of the collar first.”
“Wow, Dave. No creases anywhere. She has ironed each section of this shirt flawlessly so far. This one is a tricky one too. The thinner cottons don’t seem to have much body and are harder to work with. But Anna is doing an absolutely phenomenal job here. And look how effortlessly she buttons the shirt. Every other one and then a quick lay-out on the ironing board so she can attack the sleeves. Like we pointed out earlier, Dave, unlike her other competitors, she does the sleeves last.”
After returning from a quick commercial break (for some environmentally friendly car of some sort), Dave and Larry comment on the expert folding job and final burst of steam administered around the collar area.
“Larry, that shirt is perfect. I think the judges will have to give that a nine or higher. You could package that shirt in cellophane and sell it in a department store as new!”
I also just daydream a lot while ironing. The iron and I become partners in our quest to smooth out the wrinkles at hand; the iron steams across the crinkled plane of another blue dress shirt, this one a pale sky blue, as my mind wanders across the folds and creases of my strange life. We flatten and press until the next time a cacophony of blue shirts make their way up to my little room.
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