Socks

Socks are a mystery to me, and I am not even talking about the baffling certainty with which one of a pair always inevitably ends up going missing on its way back from the washer.

My fascination is with the human’s relationships with socks.

The moment when this relationship becomes fascinating to me is once a sock acquires a hole.

So many times have I been walking through the world with at least one of my toes completely free of its constraining fabric-container, but hidden from the world, inside my shoe. And then I wonder: how many toes are peeking through their own socks right at this moment? Is the cashier handing me my change attempting to wiggle his smallest toe back in through the new hole right there behind the counter? Is the professor who is lecturing me on how my methodology could be clearer adjusting her stance because she hates the way her naked big toe feels when being pressed into the shoe sole with full weight?

And what is even more curious to me: Do you think there are people who, when putting on their socks in the morning, realize that one has a hole in it and immediately throw it away and put on an un-holed sock instead? Because for as long as I have owned socks with holes, I do not think I have ever done that. I always dutifully put the holed sock on my foot and then regret it throughout the entire day.

I think one of the reasons why I don’t throw out holed socks immediately is my attitude toward buying socks. Socks are not supposed to be expendable objects. Once you buy a sock (fine, a pair of socks) it should last you a lifetime. I really have no nerve spending my hard earned money on something I ALREADY BOUGHT ONCE! And it’s not like with toothpaste or toilet paper where I get, that, if I use it up, I have to replace it if I want to use it again (actually, ideally, you replace it even before you run out of it. Just a thought). But why is the same true for socks? We wouldn’t buy a sweater, wear it for a few months and then get a hole in it and go “ok, it’s time, I’ll go out and buy the exact same sweater again!” For every other piece of clothing, if we have to replace it, we go with something different. Sure, that has to do with the fact that with socks there is only so much you can do style-wise and in the big scheme of fashion-purchases, socks tend to be fairly cheap so it makes more sense to buy the same pair of 2$socks twice than it does to buy the same pair of 100$ jeans twice. But still. I bought socks once, I feel cheated every time I have to go back and buy them again.

I started buying fancy fun socks to at least make this game fun. But the problem is: These fancy fun socks get holes in them just as fast as the basic boring socks. But when they get holes and you have to replace them, you feel even worse because, now, it feels much closer to having to replace that nice sweater you have only been wearing for a month.

So,socks. So necessary yet such a superfluous purchase. This is why I will keep wearing my holed socks until my toes press through them so far that the blood vessels are in danger of suffering permanent damage. So, when you see me next and are wondering whether there might be a toe peeking through my sock inside those nice, sparkly, confident boots, the answer is most likely YES.