I have just discovered that socks have mates! Now you are wondering: "Didn't your mother ever make you put up the laundry when you were a kid?" Yes, of course she did, but this is truly a new revelation, because I've figured out how the socks choose their mates!
That's right. You know when you buy a bag of 6 pair of white socks at K-mart, the kind your wife doesn't like you to wear with anything except jeans, but you want to wear them with your gray Bugle Boy pants, and she thinks you should wear gray socks, but you know that those look dorky?
Well, those socks obviously have no mates when you get them. But they go about choosing a mate much like people do. It may be in the washer or the dryer. The socks spin around in there and decide which sock they prefer spinning with, and when you go to fold them, they make sure they pair off with the sock of their choosing.
You don't believe me, do you? Okay, have a look at your white socks. Go to your drawer right now and unfold all of your white socks. You will find two socks that are longer than all of the others, and they were paired together.
You'll find two that have similar un-cleanable reddish dirt-stains near the toe, and they were paired together. You'll also find a pair with similar heel stains, a pair that are shorter than the rest, etc. In fact, you'll see that, even though you bought these socks in a package unpaired, every sock has a mate that it resembles, and they were paired together.
These socks have chosen mates for life, and should serve as an example to Americans, since about half of all Americans are now too selfish to stay married to one person for their entire life.
I wonder about the socks that you buy in pairs, usually the black or brown socks that you have to wear with a suit. These are stuck in "arranged marriages." Do they stay together for life? What if you bought two pair at the same time? Would they switch?
There are other human qualities to the socks: You know the pictures in the Sunday paper of couples celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary? A lot of times, they look like each other. Well, socks are like that. You notice it more with socks, because one sock year is like 50 people years, so they grow to look like each other much more quickly than humans do.
Of course, socks get old and eventually get thrown away. (People used to perform surgery, called darning, to extend the lives of their socks. We don't care that much anymore.) What happens if you throw one sock away? You might do this if the socks are separated in the wash, and you only notice the one that is worn out. So you throw it away and, next time you get socks from the dryer, there is one widowed sock. Often, this sock winds up in the drawer, alone without its mate, but with the company of other socks.
Could this poor sock eventually be re-mated? Or (I hate to think about this) does it ever steal another sock's mate?
Let me know if you have any more information on this.
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