When ’50s Socialization Butts Up Against 2018

By Sarah Russell

I’m teaching my granddaughters to iron shirts—collar, sleeves, right front, back, left front. I almost say, “You’ll impress some guy in college knowing this.”

Whoa!

Maybe that’s why my marriage (to that guy I impressed) ended after I read Friedan. Now women say, “Press your own damn shirt,” and men do. No wonder my granddaughters aren’t impressed with counting hangers of starched perfection.

End of lesson: “Always turn the iron off and unplug it to make sure,” I say.

“It turns itself off, Grandma.”

“But you can’t be too careful,” I say, and shit, I sound old.

        
Sarah Russell’s poetry and flash fiction have appeared in Kentucky Review, Misfit Magazine, Psaltery and Lyre, Rusty Truck, and many other journals and anthologies. She is a 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee.