by Margaret Radisich Sleasman

Created on: November 10, 2009

Laundry day and another half-dozen socks go missing. Generally not sports socks, but the dress socks or children's socks take off for parts unknown. I have drawers full of single sox waiting for mates and am running out of drawer space for other things like underwear, jeans or sweaters - my junk drawer has more single socks than junk. Once I purchased some of those sock-mate thingys where you clip pairs of socks together before you wash them - they magically changed places with each other during the wash and though two socks were connected, they no longer matched.

Even though I buy my husband the same style and color of dress socks so that when one goes missing, I can pair the missing one up with another who has lost its mate; they become chameleons and change during the wash so they still don't match any other sock. This leaves me wondering if it is some sort of plot by sock manufacturers to get us to purchase more socks and they aren't really matching in the first place. Do we really compare the socks when we open a new package to see if they actually match or are merely close? I never thought about it, but I am going to start; more than likely the sock stores will not let me in after I prove to them that the socks in a package do not match, heck some are not even close - look, one is black and the other is blackish.

I often thought that my wash machine was sucking them out and down the drain during the spin cycles, but after some twenty-five years with the same washer, you would think the hose would plug up eventually and it would no longer drain. I decided to run my hand along the top of the bucket thing that holds the clothes, maybe there would be the tip of an escaping sock that I could save. You really don't want to do that, I got a handful of what looks like mud and I am not sure I want to put my clothes in there any more.

I filled the machine with soap and disinfectant and ran it through a cycle, but that didn't help. There are still layers of mud along the top and outside wall of the wash bucket. I am left to wonder if there are sock-eating monsters living in the mud, but I am afraid of taking the wash machine apart to look, I could lose a hand and I need my hands to type.

My husband is not a plumber, but that may be the only option at this point - what wife wouldn't want their husband's groping hands eaten by the sock monster? On the other hand, after twenty-five years, maybe a new wash machine is in the cards. Now I know what the Maytag man does all day, he takes the old wash machines apart and sells sock puppets on EBay.

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