Mated Socks

In this crazy world, it's almost impossible to keep things together. It's hard for couples to stay together, hard to pay the bills on time, keep the laundry, dishes, etc. constantly clean. I can't even keep a matching pair of socks together.

It doesn't seem like being able to keep a single pair of clean matching socks together should be so hard. But in a chaotic universe that favors entropy over neat, orderly sock drawers, it's all a lot harder than it seems.

I know I should probably start taking responsibility for the chaos in my sock drawer and stop blaming the elusive black hole in outer space or the time warp in the washing machine for stealing my socks. I should also stop being such a slob and stop throwing banana peels into the back of my car and tossing socks around my room at night.

All of that's changing now, starting with the banana peels in the backseat of my car. But it seems like no matter how hard I try to get my act together, I can never come up with a matching pair of socks. I've done everything humanly possible to keep mated pairs of socks together. I've bought socks all the same color to avoid the possibility of mated socks getting separated.

That was too boring.

So, I'll stray from my commitment to stick with one thing, and I'll break down and buy a pair of different colored socks to go in my monotone sock drawer, throwing off the whole balance. That will start the ball rolling and I'll start buying socks of every conceivable shape, fabric and color.

I'll think to myself, “The stores all manage to keep the socks rolled up in neat, little packages. Why can't I do the same thing at home?”

But of course, I can't. So, I try to compensate by buying colors I think I can mix and match—like oranges and reds, purples and blues, yellows and greens.

“Well, they're ALMOST alike,” I say to myself.

But almost matched socks are like being a little bit pregnant. There is no such thing.

So, I'll think to myself, “The problem is that I just don't value my socks enough.”

So, I'll decide to stop buying socks by the pound and invest in VERY expensive socks.

That way, I reason, I wouldn't lose them. You know, like those owners of Ray Ban sunglasses who ALWAYS know where they are as opposed so those people who insist on buying 50 pairs of $2 sunglasses each year that they can never find.

Of course, with sunglasses you only have to kept track of one pair, whereas with socks, that challenge is multiplied more than tenfold.

With my VERY expensive socks, I'd carefully ball them up together each night so that they would be together no matter what. But by creating this unnatural fusion, the problem was that when I washed them, the socks never got clean or dry.

The other problem was when I'd wake up in the middle of the night, cold and shivering, reaching for any pair of socks I could find, not caring if they were clean or matching.

“Just this once,” I'd say, as I'd roll over in bed with warm feet.

But, that's a little like an alcoholic saying “just one more drink.” There is no such thing. There's ALWAYS more than one more time.

Yet given the extreme circumstances of every day life, herein lies the dilemma: Live a clean life with only matching, well-washed socks and have cold feet at night, or sink into depravity and wear mismatched, semi-clean socks, yet have warm feet all the time.

It's always been a difficult dilemma to resolve.

(Readers can e-mail Lisa at lisal@thegrid.net.)