Ladders and Ironing Boards and Maps...Oh My!

I don't know what the deal is. Really, I don't. But, I constantly have trouble trying to open and/or close ladders, ironing boards, and maps. Call it my Triad of Tyranny, but trying to put these three items back away in storage positions completely flummoxes me every time. 

They're much worse than trying to solve a kazillion piece puzzle. (By the way, I once asked my wife why she likes to do puzzles. "It's relaxing," she says. Huh. Since when is extreme aggravation relaxing? Worse, after you've slaved over them for weeks, you immediately destroy the results! I say, it's a far, far, mega-far step away from relaxation. But there I go again, digressing like the wind...)

Putting away ladders is definitely not relaxing. It's anti-relaxing. The other day, my wife left a huge and tall, extended ladder in the backyard, propped up against a tree. "Hey, would you put the ladder away?" she asked me.

"Sure." I mean, how hard could it be, I thought. Right?

Turns out plenty. I needed four hands. You have to steady it, there goes two hands. Then you need to unclasp the latch (hello, third hand!) to bring it down one lousy rung at a time. If you're lucky. (Of course your fourth hand is busy darting back and forth, trying not to get the bejeezus pinched out of it). It's a clear-cut case of a true four- hander. And that's assuming you can figure out how to work the nonsensical clasp gadget and annoying ropes that dangle in your face like annoying gnats.

Defeated, I went inside.

"Did you get the ladder put away," my wife calls out.

"No," I say morosely, arms folded and sinking into the sofa,  sulking that a stupid ladder defeated me.

Then there's the curious case of ironing boards. First off, it's gotta be said, my ironing skills suck. For whatever reason, it takes me twice as long to iron an item than it does my wife. By the time I carefully iron one quarter of my shirt, then flip it over to iron the other side, the wrinkles sneak back in on the previously ironed portion. Arghh! Talk about an exercise in frustration. Then I've also been known to melt my shirts. I didn't even know such a thing was possible!

"You're melting your shirt!" In a hotel room, my wife shoved me out of the way and assumed emergency position at the board, trying to resuscitate my apparel. "Let me do it!" 

"Good!" Again, I'm left in a defeated, emasculated manner. "Wish you woulda done it in the first place."

"Here," she thrusts the shirt toward me. "Put the board away."

Okay, I thought, time for me to pull my weight, piece back together a little bit of my frail, shattered male ego. But then I find out, it's not so easy, another example of why humans should have three hands. The latch beneath it never works for me. I push, pull, wiggle, jab, smack, curse at it, and the stubborn legs still won't fold up like a good ladder. By the time my wife comes out of the bathroom, I've got the dumb ladder upside down on the bed, wrestling it like an alligator.

Show-off that she is, natch, my wife collapses it with a finger and nary a curse word.

Don't even get me going on roadmaps. It's impossible to fold them back the same way twice. In fact, they seem to grow in thickness like a wet sponge every time I attempt to put them right again, too big to slip into the allocated glove box spot. Usually, I end up cramming a big, fat ham sandwich of paper back into the box, hoping my wife doesn't see my map killing spree.

Where do people learn these ladder and ironing board and map-folding skills? Clearly, I was playing hooky at school on those days. Or something. And my parents never taught me about the tricky intricacies of putting said items away, I guess assuming it was common sense. Perhaps women intuitively know how to handle these things? Maybe born with more common sense than men? But that doesn't make sense as more men know how to whip ladders into shape than women (at least from what I've witnessed, so don't go casting sexist stones at me!).

Or...maybe it's just me?

Nahhhhhhh. Uh-uh. No way. Couldn't be. It is to laugh! Ha! "Me." Sheesh... What was I thinking?

While we're talking about men getting confused over things, consider poor Zach, a "male entertainment dancer (NEVER a stripper)," who seems to be puzzled over everything in life, except for taking his clothes off for pay. Imagine his befuddlement when he wakes up with no memory of the night before, no clothes, and a dead man next to him in a strange bed. It's time to involve his sister, the long-suffering, usually pregnant, highly competent, yet incredibly irritable sleuth, Zora, to save his hide (and prove to everyone he's not gay; he has a rep with the ladies to maintain, natch). It's just the start of the non-stop wackiness, mystery and murderrrrrr that unravels in Bad Day in a Banana Hammock (the first in a series of Zach and Zora comedy mysteries). Zach's very bad, no good day can be discovered here!