Single Socks

According to Hallmark’s National (fill-in-the-blank) Day calendar, in addition to being National Butterscotch Brownie Day, tomorrow is also a memorial day. [Before I go any further, do brownies really need more than one national recognition day?] Yes, I know that Memorial Day does not occur until the last Monday in May. Tomorrow is not THE Memorial Day, but rather National Lost Sock Memorial Day. According to Hallmark, socks have a tendency to lose their mates, resulting in whole drawers full of “sad singles”. Do you think that this memorial day is really just a sock puppet for selling more romantic cards?

Missing socks are a recurring theme as of late. Last month, I tinfoil hat hypothesised several conspiracy theories about disappearing socks, under the blog post, Sock Nest Monster. As crazy as those theories may sound, it doesn’t seem to matter how hard you try to keep track of them, one will get sucked into the vortex that opens up in the spin cycle.

Maybe though, thoughts of alien abductions is barking up the wrong tree. Maybe socks are like people. After a few years or a few laundry cycles, which ever comes first, a member of a seemingly inseparable couple just splits. Couples therapy is difficult enough, even when you can get both halves in the same room. It is impossible, when one-half has disappeared and can’t be located. Part of the problem with losing socks, is the just not knowing. Is it something that I did? Is it nestled warmly in some sleeve? Did it get sucked down the drain?

There is something forlorn about the jilted sock, the survivor of the twosome. This is especially true, when a venerable pair comes up short. Frequently, the remaining half looks a bit threadbare and worn. One is tempted to pitch the bird in the hand, but rather than risk a Romeo and Juliet ending, it inevitably gets tossed into the sock drawer. Eventually they’ll get reunited, whether in this world or the next.

To combat this syndrome sock manufacturers have provided and consumers have responded favorably to multi-pair sock-packs of identical socks. This strategy only postpones the inevitable day of reckoning. One-by-one like the characters in Agatha Christy’s “Ten Little Indians”, this identical gene pool is whittled down. Maybe you don’t notice the diminution until say, packing for a trip. Maybe after you are left with a third wheel. Eventually, there will be only one.

Rather than organizing them in a dresser drawer that substitutes for some sort of Club Med for mismatched singles, why not step outside of your hosiery comfort zone. Try wearing closely matching socks, or better yet, go bold, make a statement, with two wildly mismatched socks. So tomorrow, as you look over all the solo socks you’ve been hanging on to for all these years, pay your respects to the ones you’ve loved and lost, but also look at what remains. You can always say that you got dressed in the dark.