Socks

Inasmuch as the Lovely Sharon is gone all winter to Palm Desert and, for most of that time, I am in Salt Lake by myself, I am responsible for my own laundry. I don’t mind going to the cleaners or washing my clothes, sheets and towels. In fact I like the way I wash and dry my golf shirts better than the way the Lovely Sharon washes and dries my golf shirts. So even if I am with her on golf shirt wash day, I prefer doing my own work. Sharon is smart and I am pretty sure she has intentionally adopted a golf shirt washing and drying procedure that I don’t quite like so I will do my own work. In return I have adopted a house dusting procedure that causes her to just go ahead and get the dusting done without asking me to help. My procedure is easy to do, I just don’t dust. When she gets back to Salt Lake at the end of May after wintering in Palm Desert, the entire inside of the house looks like a huge gray Chia Pet.

My biggest wash problem is the matter of socks. I know there have been numerous essays, jokes and other treatments of the subject of lost socks and I don’t want to beat a dead horse but I have an every growing lost sock problem that causes me angst. I basically have two general categories of socks: (i) black dress socks; and (ii) white ankle high cotton athletic socks for golf and the gym. I call my white socks “anklets” but Sharon told me real men don’t wear anklets. But what the heck, I will take the risk of losing my Man Card and refer to these white ankle high socks “anklets”.

I wear black dress socks almost all the time except when I golf in shorts or I go to the gym. I do have the odd pair of gray, brown or blue socks but 90% of my dress socks are black. I probably have 40 pairs of black socks in Salt Lake. The black socks are in a variety of styles, gold toed, black toed, smooth, ribbed, patterned or plain. Many of the differences between the various pairs of black socks are so subtle that I have to wear my reading glasses to tell them apart. My anklets are pretty easy to tell apart, there are Nike logos, Champion logos, star shape logos, red printing, black printing or some other fairly easy identification mark. With that said, I still end up wearing unmatched anklets fairly often and almost without exception, the Lovely Sharon spots the differences immediately and makes references to the mismatch. She says something like “Can’t you see that your socks don’t match?” I usually respond with something like “They are white, cotton anklets, and who cares?” This usually results in point and counter point for several minutes before we move on to less intellectually challenging dialogue.

Ok, back on sock washing/drying issues. It seems that from time to time I end up with an odd black sock or anklet from the dryer without a mate. Usually I would set the stray aside and its mate would show up in a week or so. As of the first of December or so, I had 4 unmatched black socks and two unmatched anklets. I decided not to put them in the sock drawer but instead place them in an orderly row on the floor in the bedroom. This would never work if Sharon was around because she is very orderly and would not stand for socks on the floor. I on the other hand have no objection to this, I just don’t tell her about it because I know she couldn’t sleep at night in Palm Desert if she knew there were stray socks lying on the floor in Salt Lake. So I would appreciate if the readers of this blog keep this secret sock sorting procedure quiet and not tell the Lovely Sharon about it. It will be our little secret.

As stated above, at the first of December I started with 4 unmatched black socks and two unmatched anklets. Each time I have washed since the first of December, the stray sock layout has seen a rotation of socks with new members in and old members out when their mate showed up. No matter what I couldn’t seem to get rid of the socks on the floor. Never once has there been a oneness in the sock universe where each sock had a partner, a mate to travel through life with whom to warm my toes. I did the wash last might. When I finished putting clean underwear away and matching up the socks in the laundry basket and adding new sock strays to the “need to be matched” pile on the floor, I realized I now have 11 unmatched black socks and 5 unmatched anklets. The pile has grown significantly since the first of December.

I had not realized that I have been adding a lot more socks to the pile than I have been taking out. I don’t know what’s going on.  Maybe there is some kind of replicating sock DNA that causes the socks to mutate and divide on their own creating new generations of socks.  I have looked in the washer, the dryer, my sock drawers, the hampers, the laundry room and the hallway. I have looked everywhere. I have taken some matched pairs apart to see if they are mismatched. They don’t seem to be. I have spent too much time and emotional upheaval on this problem. I am getting frustrated with the pile on the floor.   Its geeting hard to walk around them when I go into the bedrom.   If things keep going the way they are going, by the time Sharon gets home in May, all my socks will be on the floor and my sock drawer will be empty. This would not be a good for me if she walked in the house and there were 70 or 80 single socks lying on the floor waiting to be matched.

I have a few alternative plans of actions that I am considering:

(i) I take every pair of socks apart, put on my reading glasses and carefully analyze if each pair is properly matched;

(ii) I give it a few more weeks and see what shows up from the dryer;

(iii) I throw all my socks away and buy 30 new pairs of identical black socks and 10 new pairs of identical anklets; or

(iv) I say “what the heck” and just wear mismatched socks.

I am going to think through these alternatives this week and settle on a solution by Monday. I will keep you informed.