The Mad Ironer (found at Tractor Show

 World’s largest Tri-State-Gas Engine and Tractor Show in Portland Indiana.

Forty acres (at least) of flea markets, tractors, and engine exhibits.

If you don’t know you need it, you’ll find it here.

I kept reminding myself: I need nothing. I am downsizing. I am only window shopping.

See what treasures other people once thought they couldn’t live without… and are now hoping to unload on someone else.

Then I found it.

A child’s iron. An actual working one.

I picked it up and showed Pam.

“This is exactly like the one Dad brought home for JoDee. She was about three. I was the much more mature age of six.”

That little iron plugged into the wall and got hot. Very hot.

Mom warned us: “Do not plug it in. If you forget it in a pile of clothes it could catch on fire, and we’ll all die in our sleep.”

One day, JoDee was suspiciously quiet. Mom sent me to check on her.

I opened the bedroom door and there she was: ironing clothes, little iron plugged in.

“Mom said you can’t plug it in!” I yelled, trying to grab it.

“You’re not the boss of me.” She stuck out her tongue and clutched the hot iron in her fist like it was Excalibur.

Oh no. She was not going to win this battle. Mom’s rule had been broken, the tongue had been stuck out at me, and justice had to be served.

Unplugging it wouldn’t do—she’d just plug it back in. This called for heavy-duty equipment.

Mom’s good scissors.

Not just any scissors. Her special left-handed scissors. Imported. Precious. Hidden. And of course, I—the middle child—knew exactly where she kept them.

I stormed back into the room, scissors raised like a sword, and without warning—SNIP!

⚡ZAAAAP! POW!⚡ Sparks shot everywhere. For a moment, I thought I saw heaven.

But in my six-year-old heart, I knew: I had saved the family from the Demon Mad Ironer.

A few days later, Mom held up her beloved scissors.

“WHO ruined my good scissors?” she thundered.

Ruined? They looked fine to me. I kept my mouth shut.

She narrowed her eyes. “These cut something electrical. It arced a hole right through them. Who did it?”

She knew.

I stepped forward, proud. “It was me! JoDee was going to burn down the house! I cut the cord and saved us all.”

“With it plugged in?!” Mom’s face darkened. “Why didn’t you just unplug it? And you ruined my good scissors!  You could have been killed.”

Wait—what? This was not the heroic ending I had imagined.

But hey, I saved the family. That counts for something… right?

Pam and the flea market man were laughing by now. Pam asked the price of the iron.

“Four dollars,” he said.

And so, apparently, I needed the iron after all.

It came home with me—and straight to JoDee.

She held it like she’d been reunited with a long-lost relative.