How is it that no matter how much of an effort I make, no matter how many times I look under beds, dressers, and living room furniture, or how thoroughly I count to make sure I have an even number, I always lose at least one sock when I do laundry. I have checked everywhere in my washer and dryer for these lost socks and yet I still come up empty-handed.
It gets frustrating having to go room-by-room in search of all the socks that were either thrown carelessly on the floor or were used as snowballs in a summer version of a snowball fight. Add to that frustration another search during the folding phase of laundry, and my head is ready to explode like a Looney Tunes cartoon character.
I know, I know. If I would teach my children to put their dirty clothes in the hamper, it would cut my frustration down as I'd only have to search once for missing socks. I have obviously failed miserably at teaching this task to both of my children, but especially to my son. All of his clothes can be found laying on the floor directly in front of his hamper. Not on the hamper, in the hamper, or even thrown carelessly around his room. No, all of his clothes lay in a heap directly in front of his hamper.
Since he really loves football, maybe I would have better luck getting him to actually put his clothes in the hamper if I were to leave the hamper lid open and attach a cut-out of a wide receiver to it. That way he could practice his throwing and make a "completion" every time he actually gets his clothes in the hamper. I might could even take that idea a step further and attach a motion-activated speaker with audio that plays the sound of screaming fans every time an article of clothing actually makes it into the hamper.
But even with that addition to my son's hamper, it still would not solve where our socks go during the laundering process. Seriously, what happens to our socks? Are there a bunch of one-footed sock thieves that quietly sneak in our house on laundry day and steal just one sock out of my laundry? Could there be little sock gremlins or dust bunnies who snatch the socks and hide them out of spite for vacuuming up their friends each week?
Or maybe they end up down the street in one of the neighbor's washer or dryer. Maybe what happens is everyone's socks in our neighborhood get sucked out of our washing machines and pushed into someone's at the back of our subdivision. Heck, maybe that neighbor is scratching their head wondering where in the world this odd assortment of socks are coming from.
They could be a crew sock only family but now they've got ankle socks, knee socks, and socks with little danglies on the ankle. And even worse would be instead of just having white socks, they've now got a huge influx of socks with stripes, solids, neons and primary colors. Oh the horror of it all!
The neighbor might even be worried that one of their kids has a sock fetish. Imagine the embarrassment of having to talk about their child getting strung out on bright colors, Looney Tunes characters, fun patterns, and *gasp* the dreaded holiday patterns! They may be worried someone might see their child wearing socks with Christmas trees and wreaths in July. Why, they'd be so mortified and they might never live that embarrassment down!
To alleviate their stress, maybe at our next neighborhood picnic, along with potato salad and dessert, we should all bring our odd socks. We could play "Pin the sock on the owner".
Until then, my weekly search for the lost sock shall continue. Now I will look a little bit closer for any fierce looking dust bunnies that may be hoarding a sock under a sofa or dresser, and I might even check outside to make sure there aren't any footprints of a one-legged bandit leading to/from the house on laundry day.
I'm sure if we all band together, we will find the culprit of the sock disappearances and laundry day angst will become a thing of the past....... unless the culprits are actually aliens who are weaving all of our socks together in a diabolical plot to take over the world...............
by: Christie Bielss
No comments :
Post a Comment