The trauma of see-through shorts

I had a lazy weekend last week. After a three straight weeks of hectic work (incl weekends), I was letting my hair down. It was nice to relax and not to keep pace with the clock. Time sometimes runs too fast for me.

Thanks to the lazy weekend I didn't get any of the regular household stuff done (e.g. ironing clothes). At the dawn of Monday, I was hunched over the Ironing board wrestling with a business shirt which I had to excavate from the bottom of a big pile of washed, yet-to-be ironed clothes. The shirt I was ironing had a tag which read "wrinkle free". The shirt looked as if it had been rolled in a ball and been sat on by a Hippopotamus. I flattened the sleeves, straighted the collars, bssked bssked some water to subdue the material...and the brain did its thing as usual by going back to my school days when Kalai akka, our housemaid when I was in Madras (her name was Kalaiarasi), used to iron my school uniforms. I never had to worry about the clothes side of things. She took care of it. Akka, you are a legend!

So, the shirt was ironed. Pant was ironed. Someone was winning! I still had time to do couple more shirts so I don't have to endure this torment for the next two days. Just then, my flatmate popped in, his nickname is Tubs, and said in a stressed tone "O thank God. You are ironing. I am in a rush eh. Could you Iron this for me man, please?". "Of course. Give me.", I said, feeling happy that I could help someone in their Monday morning rush. Tubs gave me a black Adidas shorts to iron. Shorts are easy peesy compared to the beast of a shirt I ironed just now.

I laid the shorts on the ironing board. As I began to iron, I realised the Iron wasn't moving smoothly. "enna aachu?" (what's happening?), I thought, pressing the Iron a little harder. The Iron was stuck to the cloth. The blimming thing wouldn't move. I could sense a burning smell as well. I lifted the Iron, it had a black patch on the hot plate. Wisps of black smoke spiralled from its base. Sure enough, it had left a triangular shaped hole on the shorts. In a very short period of time, my brain went from horror, denial to plain blankness. So much for a Monday morning!

I walked towards Tubs's room holding up the shorts. I could look through it. It looked funny and I was almost about to laugh. I bumped into Nellie, my other flatmate. Nellie saw the shorts, laughed, and said "it's synthetic, Sriiii! you never iron them!".

"Oh. Is that right?"

I reached Tubs's room. Standing on the doorway holding the shorts aloft, I said "Man. I am really sorry. I burnt the arse out of your shorts". Tubs looked at the shorts in disbelief. He gave me a pained look. Oh the trauma of the burnt shorts.

As a guilt-stricken flatmate, I shouted him a few beers this weekend. It's the best therapy for this type of trauma.


Moral of the story:

1. Never, never iron synthetics.
2. Iron your own clothes. If you do burn/ruin them, atleast you'll have satisfaction that you killed it and not the other person.