On Socks

Growing up, we had a basket that sat atop the dryer in the laundry room. It was filled with socks. Baby socks and daddy socks and fuzzy socks and ankle socks and slouchy socks and white(ish) socks and black socks. Socks and socks and socks.

Every month or so, my lovely mother would get the itch for Super Chore Saturday. So along with the usual dishes-mopping-vacuuming-variety-chores, the patio was to be cleaned off, the linens closet organized, and, the most dreaded chore of all: the sock basket's contents were to be sorted into mates.

It was a hellish job. Sure, you were the one who got to watch tv while doing your chore, but you were also the one stuck still doing your chore while everybody else had long finished and gotten on with their Saturday. And, worst of all, most of the socks just didn't have mates. The dryers and gym lockers of the world had swallowed up the mates whole. Even still, socks disappear into thin air. Today I throw those lonely socks away if the mate doesn't show up in the next round of laundry. But back then, my frugal father never allowed us to throw away a thing. He held out hope that one day the missing socks might return.

I seem to recall a single argyle knee sock (circa the decade prior to my birth) haunting the wonder years of my childhood.

You know where this is heading, I'm guessing. This sock story of mine. But then, maybe you don't fully understand. You see, I've been thinking how very like the mate-less sock basket the world views we singles to be. The well-meaning sock-matched people of the world want to empty that basket so they can go out and play. Nobody likes leftover socks. So they begin their matching attempts:

They'll put a blue sock with a black sock, and sometimes they pull it off in the right light: nobody sees the truth--the two aren't a perfect pair. And so the sock basket dwindles. Soon, the leftover socks start to look like some quirky modern art collection. The match-maker wonders, "When did I get so many strange socks?" And pretty soon they're desperate to just clean the basket out already. I mean, the sun is getting lower in the Saturday sky. They start mating a pink fuzzy house sock with a novelty pink Easter sock featuring a carrot. But while both socks might be pink, yes, who could stand to spend a day in such attire? But the match-maker wants that basket empty. They need to mate each sock. They get to the point of desperation. They think: well this fishnet thigh high is technically a sock, and that leg warmer from 1982 is sort of a sock, so surely this must work.

So the well-meaning people put the two together. And some poor fool spends an evening with a fishnet stocking on one ankle and a leg warmer on the other and it is every bit as awkward as you might imagine. And that same person returns the two to the mismatched sock basket atop the dryer later that evening. And in a couple of months, someone will try another desperate match. Meanwhile the other fishnet is hiding in the back of a drawer somewhere waiting to be discovered and reunited with its mate. And the other leg warmer? Well, with some socks, there just isn't any hope.