Sock It To Me

Some routes in family seem to repeat from generation to generation. No matter how much we work to change them, they just keep cropping up. In my experience one of those mysterious generational patterns is what happens to wayward socks.

You'd think with all the taxpayer dollars spent on strange studies, someone by now would have invested time, energy, and money looking into where socks go when they disappear in the laundry. That seems to me a much more worthy cause than the mating habits of some obscure insect.

No doubt this dilemma has plagued families since the invention of the washing machine. In fact, who knows, maybe since socks began. I am totally convinced there is a little escape pod in the back of the washer that periodically loads up socks and jettisons into space. Sort of a mini Noah's ark that they enter one-by-one instead of two-by-two. 

I remember reading a theory somewhere that they all go to the dark side of the moon. Who knows. They might as well end up on the moon.

We even took a washer apart one time convinced that somewhere in it there had to be dozens of single socks. Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Not one sock anywhere to be seen. We have a large basket in the laundry room filled with single socks awaiting the return of their mates. Each year the pile grows larger.

Since my folks moved in with us, there are now two more sets of socks in the mix. At first I was hoping they might cross-pollinate with our socks and perhaps even begin reproducing replacements. But no, they have also joined the single sock brigade. I then hoped that perhaps my Dad's single socks might match up with Micheal's single socks, but evidently the pod can only take socks that look absolutely different from any other socks.

Last night as our daughter and her sons were leaving, our youngest grandson exclaimed, "I can't find one of my socks!" Fear gripped my heart. Had they now started disappearing outside the washer? Surely that couldn't be the case. Yet, although we searched high and low, no one could locate that sock.

This morning I found it out on the patio. I can't be sure, but I suspect it was inching its way toward the laundry room and the escape hatch. It's securely stashed in a plastic bag now and I plan to keep it safe until I can return it. My only hope is that I can get it back to him before its mate finds the pod.

the escape route