Tag: military

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A Boy's Life Dad Blogs Family Life in these United States

Everything I need to know, I learned in boot camp.

The military taught me many things. For example, I learned that quality shoes are essential if you plan on doing any great amount of running. I also learned that if you drink two medium-sized glasses of lukewarm water before every meal, you’ll eat less. These are things you would normally learn on your own–given time. But there were other things taught to us raw recruits–such as how to shave correctly–that many people might never have learned if they hadn’t had the proper teacher(s) at home. The military assumes the very worst about incoming recruits and prepares its training appropriately.

But one of the most useful skills I picked up was ironing. Before the military, I didn’t iron. Oh, I knew how…I just didn’t. Ironing in the Me, ironing.military is not a skill; it is an art. It is an art as time-consuming and tedious as Japanese Bonsai. New recruits are taught how to firstfold a t-shirt and then, using tweezers to pull out and hold the edges of the collar so as to not burn your fingers, press that shirt into a perfect square. If you’ve ever ironed a round-necked T-shirt, you can imagine the difficulty here. From T-shirts, one moves onto the more formal uniforms and battle dress uniform (BDUs–those camouflaged things you see soliders wearing).

Needless to say, I became a really great ironer. I even bought my own bottle of STA-FLO liquid starch concentrate and mixed my own starch spray so I could control the crispiness of my creases. And so I have ironed my own clothes for years. CareerMom–notsomuch.

CareerMom has always been a dry-cleaning kinda gal. Even when the clothes don’t require dry-cleaning, she’ll send them to the dry-cleaners just so she doesn’t have to iron them after they come out of the dryer. When times have been tough and the pennies needed penching, this was an area I always criticized. Recognizing that most professional women’s clothes require dry-cleaning, I haven’t been able to make too much of a stink, but the cost was always there…hovering overhead.

Normally I don’t have to do much ironing these days. Thanks to business casual dress, I might have to iron a couple of pairs of dress slacks, but for the most part my shirts are golf-style shirts that don’t require ironing. But lately, I’ve been interviewing a good bit and thanks to it being both summer, and stressful, I’ve been sweating a lot in my shirts. To save money, I’ve only purchased a couple of nice dress shirts to wear under my suit jacket, so I’ve been washing and ironing these same shirts a lot. And I’ve grown tired of it.

So today, I dropped off my two shirts at the drycleaners. It was a pivotal moment and I expected–at any minute–for the clouds to part and the angels start singing “Hallelujah!”

Unfortunately, all I heard was the “Thank you Ms. Megan” from the Asian dry-cleaning lady who pulled my wife’s account up as she took my bundle.  I recognize that I will probably always iron the majority of my own clothes, but I gotta be honest…they do a better job than I do and it sure is more handy than dragging out that ironing board every night. Maybe I can find a relatively inexpensive men’s clothing designer whose dress shirts REQUIRE dry cleaning. That way, I wouldn’t feel guilty about having to send them off. It works for CareerMom; why not me?

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Dad Blogs Family Life in these United States

Everything works itself out in the wash

I’m woefully behind on both household chores and funtime activities thanks to my most recent back issue (which, as I was putting on my socks this morning, re-asserted itself). And nothing makes this more apparent than my getting totally psyched over something that most people dread…

My new iron came in the mail Saturday.

Yeah, as in, an iron to make my clothes all nice and neat. I told you it was banal and ridiculous, but that’s what I’m down to these days. If there’s anything that the military taught me, other than the fact that short hair looks way cooler on short people, it’s that nothing speaks as highly of a man, as does shiny shoes and properly pressed clothes. Oh, I know that “slacker-dude” exudes a sort of charm and carelessness that some women find attractive, but I figure it’s a bit like “good girls.” You might want to date unkempt slacker-dude, but would you take him home to meet the folks?

I started ironing when I was in the military. Ironing was a highly prized skill and yes, we did approach it with an iron in one hand and a pair of tweezers in the other. Those stories are true. And perhaps since ironing was the one activity in boot camp where you could get away with doing almost nothing and not get yelled at for it, I grew to like its mindlessness.

It’s like Tai-Chi for the hyperactive.

Seriously. Now, for optimal ironing enjoyment, you can’t just approach it in a lickety-split fashion; no, you come at it with a plan and a methodology. Only then can you truly enjoy its simplicity…grasshopper.

My Program:

Get everything set. Put water in the iron for maximum steam. Organize your clothes by material, starting with silks and polyesters first because they require a lower heat setting. Gradually work your way up to cotton and wool. Turn on something mindless on the TV; a sports game or a movie you’ve seen (this is the beauty of ironing see. You can do something respectable and necessary, while also doing something selfish and wasteful! It’s a win-win!).

When your spouse walks in, he/she will click their tongue at your foolishness because they take their clothes to the cleaners, thus saving them time. However, they will also admire your fortitude and thriftyness. It’s all good though, because you’re in the zone; you don’t care what they think.

So go ahead, listen to the Mr. Miyagi of ironing: “We make sacred pact. I promise teach karate ironing to you, you promise learn. I say, you do, no questions.”