Recently, I found out something shocking about my best friend.
Seriously, there are rules governing best friendships. When a woman
has a best friend, she knows everything about her
– from whether or not she shares your deep and passionate love
for trashy British television (she doesn’t, although she is quite
partial to trashy American TV) to whether she will kill for you
(she will – bee hive destruction is her particular specialty).
Recently, I found out something shocking about my best friend. Seriously, there are rules governing best friendships. When a woman has a best friend, she knows everything about her – from whether or not she shares your deep and passionate love for trashy British television (she doesn’t, although she is quite partial to trashy American TV) to whether she will kill for you (she will – bee hive destruction is her particular specialty).
But then one day, you find out that you don’t know everything about her. That she has a secret life that doesn’t involve you. One that is actually just a tiny bit horrifying. You see, my best friend is … I don’t know if I can say it … but she’s an IRONER.
I know you’re shocked. I mean, there aren’t many women around now who are ironers – or at least who will admit they are. Ironers are women who set aside all the clothes that are wrinkled, then one day drag them out and watch a soap marathon while they steam the wrinkles out of perfectly good squished up clothes.
I am not an ironer.
Sadly, I had a devastating ironing experience in the fifth grade and I’ve never quite recovered. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say that the night of the big fifth grade choir recital, I was the only one with a giant iron imprint on my choir robe and white bandages on my left hand.
After the horror of that evening, I came to understand that ironing would not be a part of my life. I was content to walk around wrinkled. Oh sure, sometimes I wished that my shirts were smooth, especially the ones with the collar corners that were upturned and kept scratching the side of my face. And yes, I did wish for good ironing skills whenever I wore a skirt with a hem that had wrinkled up in the back, making my skirt much shorter and revealing my preference for grandma panties to the entire planet.
But I justified my wrinkled existence. I told myself that people who ironed were crazy, that they didn’t have anything else interesting to do. And as a non-ironer, I of course had tons of interesting things to do … like watch grass grow.
I even told myself that ironing was stupid. After all, the minute you wore a garment that had been ironed, it would be wrinkled. Iron a pair of pants and they’d get thigh creases the minute you sat on the couch to watch “Hotel Babylon.”
And if ironing wasn’t stupid, then why had technology found a way around it? After all, I just had to spray some wrinkle release on my clothes, toss them in the dryer and voila! They were nearly wrinkle-free. Or at least sometimes they were less wrinkled than before that whole process.
To be honest with you, this was just fine with me. I’d gone a long time without ironing and I didn’t miss it one bit. I didn’t even know where the iron was. I remember getting one for a wedding present, but I hadn’t seen it in 20 or so years.
And then I found out
that my best friend was an ironer and my whole world just crumbled. Well, OK, it didn’t just crumble. I’m abouthisclose to being that shallow – but still. Let’s just say it was a little distressing.
So I rummaged around in the garage and finally found our iron. The board itself I found in Junior’s fort in the backyard. He’d used it to practice surfing.
But that night, I turned the iron on and got out a shirt to iron. I won’t bore you with the details, but let’s just say that that evening I was the only woman in America wearing a shirt with an iron imprint and white bandages on my left hand. Some things never change.
