.....If It Wouldn't Make Me Look Like A Disco-king. 

Many things in life I feel are just absolute wastes of precious time. Somewhere very close to the top of that list is ironing.  Although I do appreciate a crisp and creased part of pants and shirt I hate ironing and while I'm doing it the other 1,000 things that I'd rather be doing are running in a continuous loop through my head.   Because I dislike the act of ironing, I do a horrible job at it.  Sometimes I'll get distracted and forget to iron the arm of a dress shirt or completely miss the bottom of a leg of pants.  This quite often brings about looks of confusion and pity from the public at large.   

I've gone to great lengths to come up with elaborate schemes to remove the wrinkles.  If I know sleeves will be rolled up you can bet that they don’t get ironed from the elbows to the cuff.  If I’m going to tuck a shirt in, I guarantee that the bottom 5 inches of the shirt will be wrinkled.  Really, who’s going to see it anyway? 

From here it gets a little more drastic.  I’ve tried nearly everything to get around the dreaded task.  I’ve wasted untold amounts of money going through handheld-steamers thinking the next one might just work a little better.  Only sooner or later to have my dreams dashed when coming to the realization that they don't really work or take just as much time and involve just as annoying of a process.  I’ve tried with great hope the, “bachelor’s method” of hanging the items up in the bathroom to soak up the steam while I'm taking my morning shower.  Although I'm embarrassed to admit it I've even tried putting on the clothes while I'm still slightly wet from the shower using the logic that the water combined with body heat might do the trick.  No dice, none of it really works.  

This brings me to one of life's great "iron-ies”.  We as a species have the smarts to hurl millions of pounds of stuff off the planet and into the vastness of space but we can't make wrinkle-free clothing that doesn't make us look like 1970's game show contestants.  They have gotten close with khakis but the wrinkle free shirts make me feel like some slack jawed supporting cast member of Napoleon Dynamite, they just don’t cut it.  They’re typically shiny, too shiny for any other place but a tacky Vegas nightclub. 

If the ambient temperature is above sixty five degrees wrinkle free shirts make you feel as though you’re wearing a form fitting Hefty bag.  Sweat stains the size of the Great Lakes will appear after 5 minutes in the sunlight which make you look either extremely guilty of some unknown and unspeakable transgression against society or very unhealthy.  So it’s a lose/lose situation really.  But I’m an optimistic guy I feel that sooner or later modern science will solve this great delima and all will be right with the world.  Until then, I’ll be the slob who looks like he slept in his clothes.

Simple but not simplistic, this life

Time, not to be wasted,

is forever fluid and relative

we are all one, everything connected

the Universe is the most wondrous web,

more vast than we can yet fathom

knowing this, I feel comfortably small

For now, I find myself delightfully contented

to feel the sunshine on my face, to laugh,

experience love. 

Forever grateful I am to still have mysteries

left to ponder and a single cup

of good green tea well within my grasp.

7-1-2009

Eric Vance Walton