‘Cool Iron’

Since there was little time in our crowded schedule, Sunday evenings had become devoted to ironing our clothes for the upcoming week. Let’s just say, like everything else, ironing takes about 3 times longer to accomplish here then in the states. Our family had a very old electric iron, but it is no match for wash boarded, hand-wrung, line-dried in wrinkles. Therefore we used metal irons heated on the wood and/ or paraffin stoves. On one particular memorable Sunday evening, I went with our sisters to get paraffin for the stove while Joe took our big pile of clothes into the kitchen to get an ironing lesson from the ironing master, mama. In the 20 minutes that I was gone, Joe managed to put the family in hysterics and gain himself the nickname ‘cool iron’! The family tried to explain between explosions of laughter that Joe was trying to iron his pants with a cold iron that had not yet been heated. Joe’s side of the story is that he read the label on the pants that said “use a cool iron” and decided that he could get those done while he was waiting for us to return with the paraffin to heat the stove. At first the family did not believe Joe and even after seeing the tag that did indeed state “use a cool iron”, they all thought that was the most ridiculous thing they had ever seen and now call Joe ‘cool iron’. It’s fun to make our family laugh. Kelli has yet to do something ridiculous enough to get a nickname.