What Can They Teach Us About Life?

 

“What happened to my blue socks?” the husband asked his wife angrily.

“I put the blue socks in the wash, and now there is only one. I need to wear my blue socks with my blue suit, and now you have lost them!”

 

“I haven’t lost your socks,” came the equally angry reply. “If you don’t like it, do your own damn washing!” with just enough venom to end the conversation.

Sound familiar?

According to a survey by Samsung in the UK, 84 million socks go missing each year. That is 1.3 socks per person, that’s up to 1,264 per person over their lifetime.

 

Extrapolating that to the USA, that is 433 million socks that go missing each year, and in Australia, a meager 33 million, assuming everyone swears socks, which in the land of thongs (or flip-flops) is an even bigger assumption.

 

So what happens to all the missing socks and where is the ‘sock black hole?’

 

It’s In the Wash

According to washing machine experts, socks can get lost in some washing machines because they get trapped between the drum and the outer tub.

 

As the drum rotates, the sharp edge on the back of the blades starts to shred the sock, reducing it to tiny pieces over several cycles that then get flushed down the drain.

 

Service technicians also claim that socks get lost in the machine’s guts, especially during spin cycles, and then get lost underneath the machine.

 

No, It’s Got to be The Dryer

If socks can’t get lost in the washing machine, then (depending on the type of dryer) they can completely get lost in the dryer. Going round and round with gay abandon, one could assume they slip out the side and into the bowels of the dryer, never to be seen again.

 

Blame it on the Operator (the Guy)

If your sock is lost in either the machine or the dryer, you will likely never see your sock again.

The third option relates to operator error.  Researchers surmise that more socks get lost when men do the washing because they take less pride in the process.

Well, yes, because washing is a pink job!

In life, there are blue jobs (those better suited to men) compared to pink jobs, which are the domain of women.

 

Men are well known for not separating colors and not checking pockets for tissues that somehow seem to migrate out of the pocket and get into every other piece of clothing in the load.

 

It stands to reason that socks can get caught up in the legs of your jeans or other clothing and ‘appear’ to be lost until that item is worn again.

Socks also have a knack for ‘hiding.’ They slip down behind the bed, get lost behind the drawers, or all those other places we never usually look at unless we are moving furniture.

 

 

Fashion must also take some responsibility as a final culprit. Supposedly, 55% of all socks that go missing are colored socks.

Before I got married, I only ever had black socks.

 

It was an easy solution to the sock problem because if you lost one, (a) you never knew, and b) neither did anyone else. If you have one left over, it goes into the spare sock category to accompany the next one that gets lost. Things were so much simpler then.

Socks aren’t the only clothing that goes missing. Handkerchiefs (although no one uses them much these days) and underwear also tend to disappear, but not to the same extent as socks.

 

Socks come in pairs. If one is missing, you immediately know because it has no buddy to be paired with. This is especially true of multicolored socks or socks with images on them.

It is like going out to dinner by yourself!

I never started having problems until I got married, when my wife tried to turn me into a trendy dresser with all sorts of colored socks. The other issue was my dog, who loved to race off with a single sock and play with it. Many a lost sock ended up in her basket.

 

Life Lessons from Missing Socks

Having established that there are several reasons why socks could go missing, what can it tell us about life?

 

First, it tells us that there is usually more than one reason why something happens. It is wrong always to blame the machine when, in some cases, the problem is the user.

 

Next, sometimes, we can waste a lifetime looking for something that just isn’t meant to be found, and it is prudent to move on and ‘buy another pair of socks.’

 

If you are male and a sock goes missing, be very careful about how the issue is raised. It could just backfire, and you will get more pink jobs than you desire.

 

Maybe the simple solution is for everyone to return to only wearing one particular color of socks so that if one gets lost, it is not a tragedy; give it a new friend until the other one turns up (or not!).

 

Till next time,

Calvin