Socks (Dateline January 2005)

I hate socks.

I HATE socks.

I hate SOCKS!!

Go ahead. Repeat it as many times as you need to. Feel better? Me too.

Because winters are soooo long up here (ending around 13 August, give or take 2 weeks) my kids dress for cold weather most of the year. On top of snowsuits, hats, gloves and neon colored jackets, my kids wear boot socks. I’m not talking about cute, pink, size 5 little girl socks. I’m talking about big, honking, manly-colored heavy boot socks the kids wear nine months out of the year.

This season the major bone of contention in our house is “where did all the socks go?” According to my kids they never existed. I know better - I still have the receipts for the darn things. So…instead of yelling and nagging and pounding my head against the wall over missing socks - I have given up and given in.

Doesn’t sound like me, does it? Well, I’ve turned over a new leaf (and ran out of unbruised places on my head). I have decided that going around the mountain instead of through the mountain will save me some time that I could be putting to better use (such as opening up another bottle of wine).

Every evening it’s the same thing. Picture a house of five kids all under the age of eight lifting up couches, overturning beds, ripping bureau drawers apart and never, ever, seeing any socks that were left behind just five minutes ago. Not even one, einie, weenie, tiny pink, size 5 baby sock. Zilch. Zip. Nada.

It’s sort of like living in an X-Files episode – Aliens Invade Home and Take off with Children’s Socks! (Film at 5!) The thing is, I don’t think it’s limited to just my kids. Try it sometime…have your kids take off their socks. Now, wait five minutes and have them find the socks. They can’t, can they? It’s like children become suddenly unable to recognize anything that remotely resembles a sock in any way, shape or form. I don’t care if the sock is a size 18, neon pink, glow in the dark, Monkey-smelling wad of yarn two inches from your child’s nose – he will not see it. If it’s under the bed, under the couch, or in plain sight it makes no difference - it becomes instantaneously invisible. I figure it is some kind of supernatural occurrence, or else my children are suffering from an over indulgence of oatmeal.

Soooo…in an effort to keep my sanity, I decided to call off the Great Sock Hunt. If the socks make it to the dirty laundry basket they get washed, dried and put away. If they don’t, oh well.

I give it two days (three max) when the socks run out. I can hear it now:

“Mom! I don’t have any socks!!”
“Where did you leave them?”
“Nicholas put them in the toy box!”
“I did not! Alexandra left them outside!!”
"I did not!! Tanner put them in the cat litter!”
“I did not!! Dad used them in the cracks of the windows!”

When that day comes, and the kids voluntarily go looking for something besides newspapers to wear on their feet, I expect the sock blindness to clear up all by itself! (But I’m not holding my breath…)