Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Lost Socks Stories

Lost Sock Stories
I Know You’re In There



Ever since I was old enough to wash and dry my own clothes, something odd would happen. I’d put my clothes in the dryer; two pairs of socks would go in but only one of the pair would come out. There I stood, staring into the dryer looking for the sock that disappeared. I felt like the little boy who chased the chuck wagon into the cupboard, opened the dog food bag and said, “I know you’re in there”.

After talking too many of my friends, they too had the same experience. I’m starting to believe there is a lost sock land that the dryer sends the one sock to called the Land of Lost Socks. Imagine a land filled with lost socks. Everywhere you looked, there were hills and mountains of lost socks. Instead of leaves on a tree there were socks and every flower and plant were made of lost socks. On the other hand, maybe there is a land filled with one-legged people and somehow the dryer would send the gift of one sock to each of them and is why so many of us loose one sock to the magic dryer.

As time passed and I got older, it was nice to know that I was not the only one who lost socks to the dryer. My dear friend Tina use to buy socks with patterns on them. However, after losing so many socks to the dryer, she started buying plain color socks; one pair for each day of the week. This way when a sock was lost to the dryer, she could pair her socks up by color but despite all her efforts, she would still end up with socks that didn’t match. Needless to say, everyone of us end up with a drawer or bag of socks that don’t match and for some odd reason we can’t bring ourselves to throw them away because we truly believe that one day we will find the lost sock. When Tina’s daughter Cori was very young, she had a Halloween sleepover party and one of Cori’s friends came in a homemade costume made by her mom. The little girls costume was a pillowcase that had socks pinned to it so all one could see were socks. When Tina asked the little girl who she was suppose to be, she replied, “I’m the Sock Monster.” The little girl’s costume was made of all the socks that no longer had a matching sock because it never came out of the dryer.

Tina said it was a good thing socks aren’t made left and right ‘cause if socks were made that way we’d have an even harder time matching our socks. That made me think, it’s a good thing we make socks so they can go on either the left or right foot ‘cause otherwise there might be one-legged people in the Land of Lost Sock without a sock to wear. Assuming of course, that some of the one-legged people in the Land of Lost Sock had a left foot and others had a right foot. Could you imagine one-legged people waiting in line to get a sock that fit their foot? It’s a good thing we make socks the way we do, so the one-legged people are able to put a sock on either foot, left or right.

My friend Katie told me, not all socks go to the Land of Lost Socks. Some socks hide in the clothes they were dried with. She said one time she got dress and went out into the world and the lost sock fell down her pant leg. There was also the time she had a lump in the back of her pants and when she tried to smooth out the lump, she found a lost sock. It made me laugh because I have found a lost socks that way too, only I thought my lump was my tucked in shirt. I remembered wishing my shirt would stop lumping up back there. Guess what, I didn’t find the lost sock until I got home from work and took off my pants and discovered the lump was a lost sock. One time I wore a lost sock in my house gown for two or three days before I discovered it was a lost sock. My house gown was purple, it had a hood and a kangaroo pocket on the front. The gown was made of polyester, so of course whenever I dried it, it would get a bad case of static cling. The sock was stuck to the inside of my house gown. One day I pulled the gown off over my head, which turned it inside out, and low and behold, there stuck to the back of my gown was a lost sock.

I also have a friend who coaches a college tennis team and she told me about the time she was at a tennis match and trying to build the confidence of her team. While sitting there waiting for her team to play she look down at her leg, there at the end of her pant leg hung a lost sock. She couldn’t help it she started laughing. She showed her team and they started laughing at the sock that was hanging from the bottom of her pant leg. Everybody knows to keep quiet at a tennis match but they couldn’t help themselves.

There are so many stories about lost socks. I did meet a man who knew what to do with the socks that had lost its mate. He told me that the mate less sock becomes a dust rag, and he demonstrated by pulling an imaginary sock over his hand and pretended to dust off his bookshelves.

As mentioned earlier, not all lost socks are sent to the Land of Lost Socks by the magic dryer. Don’t forget some socks cling to the clothes they were dried with better known as static cling. My long time friend Ekua, told me about a lost sock she found months after it went missing. One day she was dressing and selected a tight fitting shirt she hadn’t worn for a while. When she pulled the shirt over her head she found her lost sock as it had moved from inside her shirt and clung to her neck, there she stood with a sock around her neck. Well I guess this is one story that gives us hope that some lost socks can be found and is the reason we don’t throw the matching sock away.

There is one story about missing socks that tops them all, I met a young man that told me one day he went out in his back yard and found one of his socks that his dog had eaten. However he did not know what he was about to discover. I’m sure he was thinking, “Bad dog,” and pick up the sock. Well in doing so, he discovered that the holy sock was full of dog poop. His reaction was, “Oh my god I’m holding a holy sock full of dog poop.”

My friend JP thinks that the dryer sends the lost sock to the land of the kittens that lost their mittens. He said because cats don’t have thumbs that’s the reason the kittens lost their mittens so it stands to reason that the dryer would send socks to the kittens. Could you imagine a land where kittens were walking around in socks ‘cause they fit better than a mitten? JP also said there were color gremlins in his washer. He said they don’t like white things to stay white because the gremlins get bore so they turned his underwear pink and they love to put fountain pen ink on his white T-shirts. I think JP may be right about the gremlins ‘cause I had a set of black socks and every time I washed a pair, one of them came out of the washer with a hole in the toe; I think the gremlins do get bored.

All in all, we may never know where lost socks go. Perhaps we will learn what to do with the socks that have no mate and stop keeping them in the draw and in bags with the hope that one day we’ll find the missing sock. Or maybe we’ll get creative and make something out of the socks that didn’t get lost.

2 comments:

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  2. I bet everyone who reads Lost Sock Stories has their own lost sock story to tell...feel free to add your story in the add comment box and tell a friend.

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