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"Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear,
but forgetting where you heard it."
-Laurence J. Peter
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"Read not to contradict and confute,
nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider."
-Francis Bacon
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It started when I got married. I don't know why I never noticed anything before that. Perhaps
it was my mother who took care of the problem. Although, now I come to think of it, when
I was living alone, I didn't notice anything either. So it started sometime after my
wedding.
You take into your marriage all kinds of things. Ranging from furniture, possibly, to
the inevitable things like clothing. Your wardrobe could consist of many different things,
like coats, shirts and things. And men are also bound to have socks. (I know, women can also
have socks, but not necessarily, right?)
Now, there is something special about socks. They have one characteristic that makes them
stand out in your wardrobe: they always come in pairs. Pay attention to the way I'm phrasing
this: they come in pairs. Unfortunately, and this is the whole point of this sad tale,
they do not necessarily stay in pairs.
The longer my marriage lasted, the more socks were reported missing. And not just any socks.
It almost seemed like a new law of Murphy was being written: the chance of a sock going missing
is directly related to the value you place on it. My very favourite socks went missing first.
Not all of them: just one from each pair. Others soon followed. All too soon, I had a drawer
with many single socks. Just a few complete pairs were left.
When something like this happens, it starts you thinking. First you try discover the cause
of the problem. Was my wife doing the laundry bit by bit? Of course, you cannot do all the
laundry at once. But was she somehow splitting it up - splitting the pairs of socks up? And
if so, why? But she denied this most emphatically. Was something wrong with the washing machine?
Was it, for some unexplained reason, swallowing socks without returning them with the rest
of the laundry? I did happen to find one missing sock in the washing machine drain. And in the
process I did get rid of the exaggerated gurgling sound the machine had been making for months.
But this did not explain the loss of many other socks. What happened to them?
This is nineteen years ago now. You'd think that by now the problem would have gone away,
would have become clear, or would have changed in nature somehow. After all, we have moved
three times in those years. And we are using our third of fourth washing machine. So if it
had anything to do with these non-human suspects, something should have changed. Or you
would think so.
But instead of the cause becoming clear, I have noticed something that confuses me. You see,
after a while, when the problem starts to get to you, you start talking about it with others.
And to my surprise, other people also complained about the same thing. They also started
loosing socks. And their case was exactly similar to mine: they lost only single socks, not
whole pairs! Moreover, the problem started after they got married. Starts you thinking, doesn't it?
Questions that come to mind, are: Is marriage directly related to loosing socks? If so, why?
Are pairs of socks allergic to the institution of marriage? And if so, why does only one
from every pair disappear? Or do married people buy different washing machines? Machines that
cannot handle pairs of socks, for some reason, and only return one from each pair? If so,
how is it possible that even twenty years ago, or longer, they were so sophisticated that
they could tell the difference between socks from one pair and socks from another?
And it gets worse. Because, you see, I haven't even told you one important detail yet:
all those others who confirmed they had the same problem, were all men! Married
men! This makes matters even more complex. If the washing machine really is the culprit,
then how does it distinguish between women's socks and men's socks? And what does it have against
washing and returning in good order complete pairs of socks, owned by married men?
To my surprise, even a comedian on TV, years ago, commented on this problem. He also
offered a possible solution: it's a worldwide sock conspiracy! Although he didn't have any
answers as to the how, who and why, he had also concluded that the globality of the problem
indicated malicious intent on someone's part, be it human or not. The problem is too widespread
and too consistent in its symptoms to be something else.
But who the heck (or what) is doing this? As I said, my wife has emphatically
denied from the beginning. She says she is not the culprit, nor an accomplice. And I was
inclined to believe her. Until one day I saw
The Stepford Wives. Did you ever see that film? Scary!
In a small American town, Stepford (Connecticut), there was a conspiracy to replace
all the local housewives with clones (or they may have been robots).
These replacements had all been programmed in a similar way.
It may sound far-fetched, but something like this could be an explanation for the sock conspiracy,
couldn't it? Although in the case of this sock conspiracy, it's a worldwide thing, and not just something local.
The only thing that I still find completely baffling, is the "why" part. I cannot think of
any good reason for making single socks disappear. Unless it is not intentional, but simply
bad programming. Oh - there's an idea! Do you think that clones or robots could operate under Windows ... ?
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Disclaimer
This column is only for the purpose of entertaining, educating or
giving food for thought. Any persons, characters, countries, institutions or groups
mentioned are - as a matter of principle - fictional: any resemblance to existing ones is
purely by chance. ;-)
If the content of this column offends anyone, please accept the
columnist's apologies: no offense was intended.
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column noun
1a: a vertical arrangement of items on a page
b: a vertical section of a printed page
c: an accumulation arranged vertically
d: a department or feature (as of humor, sports,
literary reviewing, or gossip) in a newspaper or periodical, under a permanent
title and generally reflecting the writer's individual tastes and point of view.
2: a supporting pillar
3: a form, structure, or formation shaped like a column
(Webster's Dictionary.)
Relevant reads:
Socks: A Spin-off Special Publication for Knitters and Spinners
The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks
Washing Machine Repair Cheap and Easy! For DIY-ers and other green technicians!
The picture:
The Stepford Wives
More reads:
In the Beginning...Was the Command Line
Clones and Clones: Facts and Fantasies About Human Cloning
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