Posted on: Monday, April 18, 2005

ABOUT MEN

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

Some things you do so long you never even realize they've become a mindless habit.

You can barely remember why you do it or why you started doing it. You're caught in the motion, like me every Sunday evening, iron in hand, stroking stubborn wrinkles out of another aloha shirt.

For the record, I hate ironing. If I could get away with wearing T-shirts to work, I would.

I try to blaze through the weekly job using every shortcut I can find, like doing both pants legs at once or both sides of a sleeve at the same time. Actually, those are the only shortcuts I know.

Anyway, ironing is an ugly chore and I can't say I gave it much thought until the other day, when a friend said my clothes looked crisp.

You can imagine my pride. It was my first ironing compliment. People have admired things I have built and the way I landscaped my yard, but never the crease of my sleeve.

"Did them myself," I told him. "I do all my ironing. Don't you?"

Turns out he doesn't. His mother irons his clothes. She's 82.

Lucky man. No one is going to do this crummy job for me. Surely not Mrs. G., who taught me to iron when we first started dating. The "slept-in-your-clothes" look didn't work for her. She shoved an iron in my hand.

Funny thing about men. When it comes to choosing what to wear, we can be just as vain as women, only we like the low-maintenance approach to fashion upkeep.

Even so, I figured there was some kind of male underground solidarity in ironing.

So I asked around to see if I was the only guy sweating over collars. I figured most men would be too embarrassed to say so.

"Nope, no ironing," said a grizzled old friend. "I have a system, though. You take your clothes out of the dryer and fold them right away. If you don't do that, you'll have wrinkles."

He pointed to his fashion ensemble that day. Naturally, everything he was wearing looked like some unfolded origami. He sure was proud of his system, though.

"And you know what else?" he offered. "I do all my laundry, too."

He did this to keep his wife from losing socks.

Another friend, hearing this exchange, pointed to his aloha shirt, which was tucked in neatly and buttoned right to the top.

"Of course, I iron," he said. "See?"

He looked as if he got tired of ironing halfway through the job. Half of him was as wrinkled as a Shar-Pei puppy.

None of this made me feel any better. It didn't seem to matter if you ironed or not. And if you did, it didn't seem to matter if you were any good at it.

But next Sunday, when it's time to iron, I think I'm going to do something different.

I'm going to watch TV instead.

Reach Mike Gordon at 525-8012 or mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.