Looking for my Match

As I was growing up, we had a basket that sat atop the dryer in the garage. It was filled with socks. Baby socks, sports socks, my dads socks, white(ish)socks, and striped socks. Socks, and socks and more socks...I mean this basket was huge!

Every month or so, my lovely mother would get the itch for a 'Super Chore Day'. Along with the usual mopping, cleaning out the toy boxes, bathrooms, and yard work the most dreaded chore of all would inevitably show up: the sock basket was dumped in the living-room and it's contents were to be sorted into mates.

It was, at the very least, a dreaded job. Sure, you were occasionally paid a penny a pair, but once started, you were stuck until the basket was emptied and mom was sure that there were no additional mates. Year after year the baskets contents grew. Some of the socks as old as the basket itself, others, the dryer and gym lockers of the world had swallowed up the mates whole. Even still, I was sure that some socks just disappeared into thin air. Today, I throw those lonely socks away if the mate doesn't show up in the next round of laundry. But back them, my frugal father never allowed us to throw away a thing. He held out hope that one day the missing socks might return.

I seem to remember a small yellow baby sock with lace haunting the wonder years of my childhood.

You know where this is heading, I'm guessing, this sock story of mine. But then, maybe you don't fully understand. You see, I've been thinking how very much I feel like a faithful member of the mate-less-sock basket. I have not enjoyed being a matchless sock, and have recently begin to feel the need to pull out the basket and begin looking for my mate.

In the past I have tried to have put a blue sock with a black sock, and in the right light I pulled it off, it took a while to see the truth--that it wasn't a perfect pair. Now, at my age the sock basket has significantly dwindled. The left over socks have started to look like some quirky modern art collection. As I begin to attend single events I can't help but wonder "Where did the basket gather so many strange socks?" There's a pink fuzzy house sock with a novelty pink Easter sock featuring a carrot. But while both socks might be pink, yes, who could stand to spend a day in such attire?

So I have jumped in the dating pool and unfortunately this poor fishnet socking sat at dinner with a leg warmer and it was every bit as awkward as you might imagine. So the fishnet and the leg warmer were again returned to the mismatched sock basket atop the dryer to sit and wait. Meanwhile, I can't help but wonder if the other fishnet is hiding in the back drawer somewhere waiting to be discovered and reunited with its mate.