The origins of my ironing

Yesterday I examined the little matter of recalcitrant shirts upon the ironing board. Thinking about my (lack of) ironing skills, I conclude that it is my 10th-grade consumer ed. teacher's fault that they are not better developed. I have forgotten this teacher's name now, but it was something haughty, like Ms. Pisani, or Ms. Pirani, or maybe even Ms. Piranha. In her class, which was filled with an astonishing number of males given the subject matter, we learned important self-sufficiency tasks like balancing a checkbook, planning meals, and ironing shirts. I think we secretly hoped we would also learn how to become millionaires who could hire people to do these things for us, but that never appeared on the course outline.

I evidently looked, to the teacher, as if I had been born knowing how to iron, for she never called on me to demonstrate my skill at ironing in front of the class. This embarrassing procedure she saved for the males in the class, whom she probably assumed did not know an iron from a toaster. Judging from their practice sessions, she was not far off.

The truth was that I myself did not easily distinguish an iron from a toaster, either. I had never been made to iron at home. This probably had something to do with the fact that I was the youngest and therefore, as my siblings are fond of saying, extremely spoiled. I personally did not see what the fuss about ironing was; what did it matter if one's clothes looked as if they'd been trampled by wild boars?

But if I got away with not learning how to iron at home, I did not think I would get off so easily at school. My goal during the ironing unit was to make sure that no one -- no one -- learned of my ignorance of this basic survival skill. Though I knew I should probably pay attention to how it was done, and therefore actually learn something, I was also desperate to avoid being found out. Pretending to doodle, and feigning as much boredom and disinterest as I could muster (which wasn't hard, given my age and the subject matter), I surreptitiously took notes as the teacher instructed some poor boy in the art of subjugating a wrinkled shirt: "Always begin at the neckline. No, not the sleeves! The sleeves we save for last. Now, pull the garment taut with one hand, and firmly -- don't wrestle it as if it were an alligator! -- guide the iron up toward the neck...."

Somehow I made it through Ironing Instruction without ever being called upon to actually pick up an iron. Everything I learned about ironing was acquired through mere observation, which could very well account for my inadequacies.

Or, we could blame it on those ornery shirts.