Perhaps we should talk about disobedient internet-connected ovens and what they have to do with Facebook's latest plan to spy on your life, but first we must admit the flaws of the modern American iron.
I just wrote that to see if I could generate a nonsensical first paragraph; wonder if I can tie them together. Let's see.
My iron has about 40 settings. Linen. Organic linen. Cotton. Foreign cotton. Hand-picked cotton. And so on down to the lightest setting, which produces the same effect you'd get by breathing on the fabric.
Of course it has steam, less steam or no steam at all. It has a retractable cord that zips into the body of the unit like a shamed snake. It is a lightweight marvel — and mostly useless, because I only want two settings: hot and cold, the latter also known as off. But here is how the iron behaves.
Plug it in; within a minute, a moistened finger hisses on its plate. Get out the shirt to be ironed; remove from hanger; apply iron, which has shut itself off. "Oh, I'm sorry, were you going to iron something? Well, set me up on my haunches and I heat up straight away."
While it heats, you brush your teeth, during which it completes the heating cycle and shuts itself off again, something you don't discover until you try to use it and some water dribbles out of its steam-holes like spittle from a passed-out drunk. So you set the iron back up, wait, then start to iron again. During the process, the light will go off to indicate that it has decided to cool down a little before we continue. That doesn't mean it's off, just that it's not heating at the moment, if that's OK with you. Wouldn't want to scorch anything!
It's been like that with every iron I've bought in the last 30 years because of some maddening hand-holding safety regulation. Apparently in the '70s, houses were going up in flames every day because someone left the iron on, so lawmakers insisted that the menacing devices shut themselves off.
Of course, we still wonder if we left the iron on when we leave for a vacation.
