I travel by air, rail and sometimes car. Air is fast but a pain for those short trips. Rail is comfortable and civilised but slower than air with limited stops. Cars are the worst of all, slower than rail, concentration is a must and don’t get me started on all those stops.
But cars are good for one thing, you can hang up all your dress shirts without worrying about them getting wrinkled.
It was with that knowledge that I arrived at my hotel this past Sunday, hung up my shirts and went about my business (see yesterday’s post Fig Pizza).
Yesterday I woke up, walked into the bathroom, which is quite large. In fact, it was twice the size of my own bathroom at home. Hung on the wall, waiting to be used, was an ironing board and iron but I wasn’t going to need it.
Ironing is one thing I’ve never mastered, who am I kidding, it’s one of many things I’ve never mastered. But I’m really, really bad at this task. So bad, my wife would rather I not touch the equipment. When travelling however, I have no choice and the inevitable struggle begins with the shirt often looking more wrinkled when done.
Today I pulled out a shirt, a new one, freshly ironed, by my wife. It travelled all the way to Ottawa hung on some hook in the back. There wasn’t a thing touching it, not a thing. No way that baby was going to have a wrinkle.
But it did…
From top to bottom, on the right-hand side, a deep crease. I have no idea how it got there, I was so careful. Of course this was all discovered a few minutes before I was scheduled to leave. I plugged in the iron and tried ironing out the crease while wearing the shirt. When that didn’t work, I unfolded the ironing board, fixed the wrinkle, put the shirt on and ran out the door.
While standing in the elevator, staring at the mirror, I noticed yet another crease on the other side… bloody hell.
I’ve said this before in other posts, but it’s worth saying again. With all the technology surrounding us today, how is it possible we haven’t invented a non-iron shirt? Many are advertised as being non-iron, like the one I have on today.
I have an idea, let’s just ban dress shirts altogether. Maybe make the lowly T-Shirt the new business norm. While we’re at it, lets scrap the belt too. Hell, we might as well wear pyjamas to work. You can sleep for weeks in pyjamas and they’ll never have a wrinkle.
Signed… frustrated.
the dan blog 