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Ironing out new details in rumpled existence

In most households it wouldn't have been much of an announcement.

"I have to go to Wal-Mart," my wife said.

To appreciate the gravity of this statement, you have to understand that my wife was born without the shopping gene. I have seen her in a mall three times in the last four years, usually when she is going with me to buy something I need. When it is absolutely necessary, she will venture out to shop for clothing and come home with three outfits on which she has spent a total of about $35.

"Oh, yes," she said once, "and another $7 for the shoes."

"Seven dollars for shoes?" I said in mock exasperation, "My God, woman, do you think we're made of money?"

"Do you think it was too much?' she asked, so help me, with a straight face.

Friends have tried to drag her along on shopping trips, but she usually looks forward to the experience with as much enthusiasm as I have for Lifetime channel film festival.

You get the picture. Not a lot of shopping goes on here.

"So, why do you have to go to Wal-Mart?" I asked.

"To get an ironing board," she said.

"You mean we don't own one?"

Negative shake of head.

"You're sure?"

She was sure. There was an antique board, the type that usually folds down out of a wall, stored in the storage shed, but I had never seen it before. I think someone broke in and left it there as some sort of bad joke. We both have our own reasons for lacking ironing implements, in my case due to a previous spouse who was allergic to laundry products, which forced us to have to send all of our laundry out.

Okay, all of her laundry.

I have always been sort of given over to the natural look, which those more devoted to sartorial splendor refer to as rumpled.

I guess I started to look better when permanent press fabrics came out, but I never noticed because the process doesn't really apply to denim shorts and T-shirts. Hawaiian shirts come that way, but I learned before that to pick the kind with ghastly colors and busy floral patterns - and then nobody notices.

My current wife is always presentable, and she has a weird knack for not wrinkling clothes. I swear - and her kids will back me up on this - she can sleep in her clothes and get up eight hours later completely unrumpled. Not that she does that a lot, but sometimes she dozes off while watching television at night. (I've noticed that happens to people who work.)

"Do we own an iron?" I asked as she trundled the new board out to the car. "It would be the big heavy metal thing with the handle and one end kind of pointy."

Yeah. I know. I was living dangerously. But I have found that one of the advantages of aging is that you can get away with saying just about anything, as long as you mumble.

It turned out we did have one. I had been using it as a doorstop in the library. It was successfully plugged in and didn't blow any circuit breakers, although it did smell funny for the first few minutes.

Actually, I had slowly been winning my wife over to casual dress. I got her to buy some jeans, bought her a couple of tie-dye dresses and allowed her to wear my Grateful Dead T-shirts, partly as an experiment and mostly because it tickles me to see a Republican in one.

I was only minimally curious about the ironing thing, since I am still exempt, but, because we share laundry duties, I had to ask.

"Why, exactly," I asked, "did we need an ironing board?" We had gotten along without one for nearly four years. All of a sudden we need to iron now?

She reminded me that she had received a recent promotion and, as she tried to figure out how to set up the board, answered my question.

"I'm in management now."

Two steps forward, one step back.

[Last modified October 10, 2005, 01:18:12]