The Great Sock Depression

I have lived through the Great Sock Depression. I will never be the same.

There was a time when socks were plentiful. Every Christmas and birthday, I would receive a new package of white cotton ankle socks. Sometimes I would even get patterned ones or holiday-themed ones. Life was wonderful. Sometimes a sock would lose its mate, but the little basket of single socks was always there, and the match was eventually found.

Then I started doing my own laundry. The socks began to disappear at an alarming rate. They would disappear into oblivion, and I couldn’t find them, despite my searching. I could not wait until next Christmas, so I bought my own package of Hanes socks.

Using a Sharpie, I painstakingly inscribed a letter M on the inside of each cuff to mark each white bootie as mine. No one else’s. This package was particularly large, so I was fortunate enough to relish the joyous comfort of wearing new socks over and over again for about one month.

For the next few months, I tried my best to account for every sock and not leave one behind. I still lost a few here and there, but I was vigilant and there were few casualties who fell to the unseen evil sock-sucking vortex.

But the move threw everything off-kilter.

In the stress of finals and packing to return home for the summer vacation, all the possessions I owned were thrown hap-hazardly into any transportable container and shoved in my 1988 Honda Civic. I’m sorry to say many socks didn’t survive the journey.

At home, I still had access to plenty of socks. My sisters, my mom and I all have the same size feet, so we share our socks.

But then I started working-out more. My family exercises like it’s nobody’s business, and they’re accustomed to going through a short sock turn-over, but I wasn’t.

Not only were socks disappearing faster than normal, because they were being washed more than usual, but holes were starting to appear! The socks were dwindling and I couldn’t keep up with the laundry fast enough.

I didn’t want to buy more. It’s not that they’re expensive… it’s just that I feel that they should last longer. I settled for long socks until the summer heat suffocated my feet too much.

I then turned to wearing miss-matched socks. It took all my willpower to overcome my obsessive compulsive tendencies to do so, but eventually I became callused and unfeeling to the statutes of order of matching socks.

Slow combing of the laundry room, and pathways to it, has yielded in some fruitful recoveries of lost socks, which has relieved the shortage.

Wearing old, holey socks has also helped the situation.

Analysts say that the depression has official come to an end, and everything should look up soon.

I hope so, because I love socks. The end.