Shirt Rage

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that a shirt freshly ironed and gently hung on a hanger will be scrounged up into a crumpled ball and left on the settee in less than an hour.

‘Teenager!’ I yelled up the stairs with blood curdling near hysterical tones on finding the ruined shirt.

He beams at me from the safety of the landing as I demand an explanation.

‘Oh, don’t worry about that.’ he says cheerily. ‘Nobody will notice the creases once I’m wearing a jumper over it.’

His logic is faultless and infuriating.

I inwardly burn like white-hot metal.

I’m trying to get things ready for the wedding but I feel as though I’m climbing a slippery ice mountain and getting less than nowhere with the preparations.

The brand new clothes bought only a week before which I requested The Teenager not to wear and to keep pristine for the wedding have all been worn. The new shirts are now residing in the fusty warmth of the clothes basket together with the neat new trousers, and worst of all the brand new jumper has been worn and lost.

The blue shirt I’d just ironed was his old school one I’d only just ironed for him.

I iron out the creases again, and then lament having to iron his old school trousers that will just have to do.

There are other smart clean jumpers but he won’t wear them. I’m forced to rescue his favourite old black jumper from the very bottom of the wash basket. It is damp with a sickly sweet smell, and I notice at the hem at the back that a new hole has laddered.

I sew yet another repair with incandescent fingers before I iron it.

The Teenager won’t take a tie. He refuses to wear one.

I could argue but it would not be in the interests of World peace.

Gently, I fold and pack the chosen ruined ironed clothes neatly in a bag.

I hang the shirt up at the back of the car on its hanger.

We are later setting off than I’d planned, and we pull away from the house, having checked to make sure the door is really locked a thousand times, with me barely able to speak.

On the back seat The Teenager's ragamuffin wedding clothes gently perfume the car with their ‘sweet’ aroma. The Teenager blithely watches the world slip past his window unaware that a freshly forged grim metallic gargoyle-like creature is now hunched over the steering wheel and squatting at his side.