The Great Sock Caper

Eldest boy moved into men's 9 shoes last fall. Round about that time, both he and the hubs needed new socks and, as they were both within the same size range, I purchased two 10-packs of the same socks and figured I could just go halvsies with them when folding the laundry.

This has worked well enough, by and large.

Until today.

Today, hubs was wandering around in his sandals as we were prepping to head out to our usual Friday lunch with my Dad. Since hubs had taken the day off, he'd been planning to join us. Except he had no socks. (His sandals are just for schlepping about the house in, he won't wear them out anywhere. Why? No idea. It's a firm line in the sand for him though.)

"Eldest," he hollered, "bring me some socks from your room, I'm out!"

Eldest responded, "I only had the pair I'm wearing."

I frown. The laundry was, as we spoke, swirling about in the washer, but there were not 19 pairs of socks in there. Especially as I do laundry twice a week -- Mondays and Fridays -- so there should have been plenty of socks somewhere.

"Where did they all go?" I wondered rather loudly while giving eldest the gimlet eye.

He shrugged.

Hubs says, "I'll just stay home."

"Don't be silly," says I, "Eldest, take off your socks and give them to Dad, then go get a pair of your brother's socks and wear them."

Youngest's socks would be smallish, but doable for the short duration of our outing.

"I don't want to wear socks that have been on his manky feet!" Says hubs.

"Oh, good Lord," says I.

After a bit of back and forth, he agrees to wear the socks that had been on eldest's feet for all of fifteen minutes and we all piled in the car.

Upon returning home, I point at the boy child and instruct him to go scour his room for socks. After a few minutes of rummaging, he emerges with a small armful of socks that we toss in the washer as a tiny, ecologically unfriendly load, in an attempt to try and recreate sock happiness.

As I'm folding, I say to hubs, "I'm going to go buy a pack of a different brand for you. Then I'll know who gets what."

"No. We'll just do sock socialism and redistribute them."

Okay. Fine. Whatever. I can see this is going to be a recurring problem, but I guess we'll cross that bridge when we have to.

I leave all the man socks to last and put them in piles of two as I count - 1...2...3...I get to 9. There are 9 pairs and one lonely sock even after eldest has gotten "all" of them from his room.

I call him back and point to the piles. "See these?"

"Uh huh."

"We are missing 21 socks. Go find them."

"But but..."

"Where else could they possibly have gone? Dad didn't lose them."

He totters off to look again and comes back shortly with another small pile and a sheepish expression. Seems he goes to bed with socks on and takes them off half-way through the night and they then get squirreled away in various places. These were in the little cloth pocket that hangs off the edge of the bed to hold his glasses and the remote for the light. He thought they were tissues.

I didn't explore why he thought it was okay to just leave used tissues in there instead of cleaning it out into the trash. But okay, fine, it's still not all the socks.

Another rummage and finally FINALLY we have found all 20 pairs of socks.

I have forbidden him from wearing socks to bed.