Function like an Adult: or at Least, Pretend to

I often get mistaken for a real adult. I have an office job, I’ve lived (and not studied) abroad, I subscribe to the New Yorker!! and buy whole-grain bread and do laundry semi-regularly. To those looking in, things appear to be full steam ahead into the world of maturity and grace. NOT SO FAST! I don’t have a  degree, or a credit card, or the capacity for forgiveness. Or health insurance! I might as well be sixteen!

Just so we’re clear.

I also don’t own an iron, which definitely slams the brakes on any auspices of adulthood. This isn’t the result of some long-standing grudge against The Man or refusal to be a cog in the corporate machine (although that does sound luxuriously adolescent, doesn’t it?), but rather, straight up forgetfulness. I’ve been meaning to get a new one… but I am too youthful to actually remember that when I’m at Target or wherever you old-asses go to buy irons in this city. God forbid I make a list or something. I also cannot pronounce iron correctly, owing to learning English – my second language – in Alabama, so I rarely think the word and even more rarely say it aloud. Maturity wouldn’t care!

THE POINT IS, I only remember it when I need to put on this charade of adulthood in the morning. I imagine plenty of you are in the same boat: 1 wrinkly button-down standing in in the way of that paycheck, and by god! We are gonna make it out of the house today, looking like chewed-up ass or not. Worry not, Brokeasses, we’ll get that skrilla yet. I’ve got a (free?) trick for ya.

Fake it ’till you make it: Unwrinkling things without an iron
1. Rescue wrinkly thing from heap of clothing on floor.
2. Hang it on a wire hanger.
3. Turn the shower up as hot as it will go.
4. Hang the offending article up in the bathroom where it will get the most steam.
5. Shut bathroom door, go make yourself a coffee, read the New York Times and thrill in your own maturity.
6. After a while, go retrieve it from the sauna you’ve created.
7. Tug out the wrinkles.

There you have it, folks. The key to looking like you have your shit together is arriving vaguely unrumpled, and as it turns out, that’s pretty easy. Now you have no excuse not to go forth and convince everyone of your full-grown status.

Even if you did have taquitos for breakfast this morning. And are still giggling about the fact that I just said “tug out.”