Iron Man?

I frequent a homeschooling forum. It is a wealth of knowledge and wisdom. Sometimes it's just a place to find some levity and share a chuckle with other homeschooling moms.

Just now a woman posted about reading a book to a group of children in which the story mentioned a woman ironing. A child in the group asked "What is ironing?" The woman wanted to give other kids an opportunity to share the answer so she asked the group if anyone knew. Not a single child knew what ironing is.

My initial reaction was shock. How can a child not know what ironing is? Then I realized that we don't do a lot of ironing around here and it is quite possible that our boys don't know. So I decided to ask. It went like this:

Me to Joel: Do you know what ironing is?

Joel: No. What is it?

Me: You don't know what it means to iron clothes?

Joel: Ohhhhh! You mean metal. Metal clothes. Like Iron Man?

Seth enters room not knowing about conversation with Joel.

Me: Do you know what ironing is?

Seth: No.

Me: You don't know at all what it means to iron clothes?

Seth: No. What does that mean?

Joel: Oh wait! Does it mean clothes on fire?!

I started laughing and the boys begged me to tell them what it actually means. They knew it immediately once I described it, but it really was funny to me that they didn't know what it was called. I rarely iron and if something needs to be ironed Mark does a far better job than I (it's that attention to detail thing) so he's the better one to do it.