by Jennibean

Created on: November 11, 2008

The Super Fantastic Amazing Reproductive Ability of Socks

Yes, you read that right. Socks. The single most populous item in my laundry repertoire actually lives and breathes and has a life of it's own. Most people have problems with the dryer swallowing their socks. I have this problem too. Yet somehow, the sock inventory stays at an even number, give or take a few. I'm convinced there's evil afoot in those drawers. Somewhere in the laundry pile there is a Hanes and a Fruit of the Loom cultivating a nice relationship... that will result in... more socks!

And it's never a lovely replica of the originals... it's always a stray, mailman's-kid type of offspring that clearly doesn't belong to any of the feet that live here. Like a two foot long humdinger with gray heels and arch support, clearly more suitable for a pair of skis than a human foot. A search of the laundry room reveals no match to this cotton transient that has somehow made it's way into the mountain of unmentionables that eagerly await their turn in the bath. How it turned up in there is anybody's guess. It had to have been born there, because I've never seen it before now. What the heck do you do with it? Nobody here has any use for it. I start to throw it in the trash, but am suddenly stricken with guilt, and the thought crosses my mind that where there's one, there has to be another. I lay it across the top of the dryer and go about my business.

I move from room to room, picking up crusty little balled-up stink bombs as I go. Lift up the skateboard... there's one. Behind the trash can... there's another. Crammed under the couch... two more. Next room... one on each bedpost (how clever).... pluck, pluck, pluck, pluck. Oh, wouldja looky here... no toe, no heel, and black on the bottom. Time to pitch that one. I go out to the backyard. There's a parade of damp socks surrounding the trampoline. A battleground of fallen, forgotten soldiers. I pick these little nasties up with the tippy-top edges of my fingertips as though they are poison. They certainly smell as though they might be. Here a sock, there a sock, everywhere a sock-sock...

Down to the laundry pile they go. I put in as many as the drum will hold. They wash, they dry, then go into a whole separate mountain that clutters my bed, until I am able to sort them. That's when it happens. Under a pair of tighty whities, a foreign seamline is peeking out at me. I don't remember ever purchasing socks with a black seam at the toe. I pull it out and inspect

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