IRONY BOARD

Today, in a local store, I heard a woman trying to explain to two young children what an IRON and IRONING BOARD are.  She told them, "In the old days, women used to iron clothes and they used a tool called an iron."  I spoke up and said, "I still do."  After a bit, I learned that these were her grandchildren.  I asked, "You know when clothes are wrinkly, how does your mother make them smooth?"  One of the girls answered, "She doesn't."

I told them that I keep my ironing board and iron set up in the spare bedroom.  I told about a time when my niece and her five-year-old daughter came to spend the weekend. The grand-niece wanted to see where her room was located.   When we went to the room, I began to take down the ironing board and she asked, "Aunt Sue, what's that thing?"  I explained about ironing and I took a blouse from the closet to demonstrate and she said it looked like FUN!

She ran downstairs to tell her mother about the ironing board and the "fun" time we'd had.  Her mother said, "Well, Aunt Sue's idea of fun and mine are two different things!"  The grand-niece asked, "Why can't we have an ironing board?"

Her mother said, "It's because I don't like to iron clothes and I don't buy anything that needs to be ironed!"

In the 1970s, I worked with a man who had always been impeccably dressed;  his shirts and slacks were always nicely ironed with creases on the shirt sleeves and pant legs.  One day I noticed that his shirt was wrinkled and that he had worn the same shirt the previous day.  My first thought was that his wife was ill, but I did not inquire.  After several days of seeing his rumpled attire, I realized that he wasn't living at home.  Feeling that we were close enough friends, I asked, "How long have you been living away from home?"  He asked how I knew and I told him that I had noticed that his clothes weren't ironed.  He asked if I thought that anyone else had noticed and if were people talking because he didn't want our boss to find out, as he wanted to move back home and he didn't want to be the topic of gossip.

He asked if I knew someone who would iron his clothes.  That's how my mother got a part-time job!