The strangeness of it sent shivers down my spine. The pillows from the sofa were strewn across the floor. Magazines littered the coffee table. A wilting plant on the counter cried out for water. In the middle of it all stood the strangest thing of all with long white scissors for legs. It wore a padded bra of sorts with hideous blue and white stripes. Oh no! An ironing board.
"We can't afford the dry cleaner any more," Richard announced. I'd sent him there with some clothes I needed to wear at my new job.
"Why not?" I asked.
"They want four dollars a blouse. Do you know how long you have to work to pay for that?" he responded."
"Almost a half an hour." I'm earning ten dollars an hour and I still want to live the life I used to have. Richard and I often have the discussion of when we started to think that $10 an hour was a good paying job. We're not quite sure when our minds shifted but it was sometime in between when I was laid off and now. Reality sunk in quite quickly when I saw that ironing board.
When I was working I dropped off the overstuffed bags of dry cleaning in the comfort of my own office building. I haven't pressed my own clothes in years. At that time I only had to work for maybe an hour to pay the cleaner to work magic on our clothing. We didn't even own an ironing board. I wondered if I could even remember how to do it. Iron, that is. My! How life has changed.
So for $25 I now have an ironing board which I have to work two and a half hours to pay for. Today I ironed six cotton blouses, each taking roughly five minutes to complete. Six shirts at four dollars a piece comes to $24 so I have already paid for the privilege of ironing my own clothes. I know. Convoluted math. No matter what kind of math Richard uses, I think my paltry paycheck was spent long before I ever earned it.
But I'm fairly certain, I have a new skill to proudly display on my resume.
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