irony

the raw and the cooked

I worked that iron. It was a firetrap and a saltbox. It spit, it leaked, it shot sparks, and it melted the elastic in my underwear. The steam button released more salt than steam, and sometimes the clothes would end up more wet than dry. And yet, somehow or another, everything got ironed. Amid complaints and curses, I, like the iron, worked in fits and starts.

Until… somebody got tired of my griping and got me a new iron. A fancy new iron. Knowing what this could mean to me, I took my time, I read all the instructions, I used bottled water. I got it all set up, plugged it in, and nothing. Oh, my new iron still has all the promise of when I first took it out of the box. I believe we’ll have a long, steamy, wrinkle-free future together. But the old iron, that jealous, temperamental bastard, just had to get one last laugh before being relegated to the dustbin. Turns out that in its final spark-filled performance, it shorted out the wall socket, the only one I’ve got convenient for ironing.

Which means, new iron or not, this week, unlike almost every single week within recent memory, nothing got ironed.