Socks will venture forth where pantyhose fear to tread.
Somebody should make a science fiction movie about it.
This was the conclusion that I came to as I was folding last week’s load of whites and found six more socks than there were mates for.
I don’t know about your house, but I have just about decided that the Lambert family laundry room has some kind of kinetic powers to perform a 100 percent cotton disappearing act.
It’s always the same. I gather up the laundry, and knowing that socks have a tendency to take off, I make sure the mates are all in the same load together.
But, no matter what precautions are taken, somehow between the washer, the dryer and my laundry basket, the escapees become AWOL.
Mateless wonders, I call them. And I’ve started to fill up one whole drawer of nothing but these lonesome leftovers.
One theory I’ve pondered is that socks aren’t especially happy about their lot in life. After all, they have to go on people’s feet. They get stuck in shoes or boots all day.
And when they’re worn, sometimes they stink. And I’ve noticed in some cases, they become just plain foul. (Just ask any sock that’s had the misfortune of being worn home by my husband after a long, hot day at work.)
My guess is that some socks see the laundry as their only way out, just like in some of the old prison movies.
They speak to each other in the sock drawer, barking out secret code words for the breakout.
“The red dog barks at midnight. Pass it on.”
They act nonchalant as they go through the wash and get sudsed off. But by the time you come to get them to take them back to their respective drawers, they’ve already hatched their getaway plot.
I can imagine the lone sock, anxious to seek a new way of life, stretched as flat as it can get against the inside of the dryer, up toward the top rim where you can’t see it. After you take the rest of the laundry away, it sticks its toe out.
It checks to make sure the coast is clear, and then it inches its way out of the dryer vent and into the world.
To be honest, I have foiled more than one sock’s getaway since I’ve wised up to this plan and began feeling all the way around the top of the dryer.
But this isn’t the only theory I subscribe to.
Perhaps socks are like black widow spiders. They have a tantalizing tango through the spin cycle before eating their mates.
Or it could be that socks have varying degrees of shelf life. Some socks may last a long time, while others may be only good for a few wearings before they suddenly pop and disintegrate, with the only clue of their existence being an unusually large puff of lint in the filter.
My favorite theory, however, the one that should be a movie of the week, is the theory of time travel.
I don’t have all the mathematics worked out yet, but here’s the basics: The socks go in the dryer. The rising temperature, mixed with the tumble motion combine with a chemical reaction to the elements in the April Fresh Downey. As the dryer spins them faster and faster, some of the socks are eventually transported through a time travel portal in the dryer.
You open your dryer, you put together the mates, and it never fails. Your mateless wonder is waiting there for you. The solitary sock. The lone footy.
I may never prove it, but I’d be willing to bet that somewhere back in time there’s a land where the only inhabitants are dinosaurs.
And they’re all walking around in only one sock.
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