OK, Sock Me One

Let’s talk about socks. Socks have to be the most elusive article of clothing known to families with kids. They are an ever-present source of trouble and their powers of disruption are far greater than their size.

“I don’t have any socks.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard one of the boys say this phrase. I can tell you the last time I heard it though. It was 10 minutes ago. It’s always 10 minutes ago.

This statement is always being said despite an extraordinary quantity of socks in our house. I’m talking well over 100. Of course, we don’t necessarily have 100 pairs of socks… As you probably know, socks never disappear in pairs. We have a tub full of unmatched socks next to the clothes dryer to prove this.

How socks go missing is one of the great mysteries of domestic life. A child goes from having two matching socks on his feet, to placing two dirty socks in the hamper, to having only one sock in the clean laundry.

Socks never go missing in the washer (or as the 5-year-old more aptly calls it, the “wetter”).

And while dryers eating socks is a well-known phenomenon, that doesn’t explain the majority of the lost socks.

Sometimes we know how the sock was lost. Several times we’ve lost socks on walks around the neighborhood. If you’ve ever been on a trail or sidewalk and seen a small sock trampled in the dirt and wondered how exactly this occurred, let me explain. In most cases a child didn’t run so fast his socks blew off his feet. It seems like the sort of thing that must be happening, but I can say on good authority this almost never happens.

What does happen though, is a baby or toddler in a stroller has socks on their feet. Because they are a baby or in the stroller they don’t have shoes on. During the course of the walk they wiggle out of a sock (just one because socks apparently are charged with reverse polarity) and a sock drops off their foot, falls under the stroller, and lands on the ground to baffle walkers for the next several days.

Many times we’ve gotten home from a walk and had to send out a search party (older boys on bikes or with flashlights) to look for the baby’s missing sock. That’s kind of like a scavenger hunt, right?

The other way to lose socks on walks usually involves the creek. It goes like this: kids are at the park and want to play near the creek. They are told not to get their shoes wet. They take off their socks and shoes and either put their shoes on when they’re done and not their socks (ridiculous, I know, but have you ever tried to put socks on with soaking wet feet?) or they put both their socks and their shoes in the bottom of the stroller and during the course of the walk home one of the socks falls out.

Before I provide some solutions to the great sock dilemma, there’s one more sock situation I want to address. And I’ll do it by starting with an apology. Dear Mom, I am sorry for ever wearing socks outside without shoes when I was a child.

I can’t tell you why I did this as a kid. I can’t tell you why my kids do it now. But I can tell you from the number of holes worn into their socks, it’s happening way too often. So much related to socks is inexplicable and this scenario is no different. Both my kids and I are/were barefoot kids so the sock wearing isn’t about tender feet or comfort. When I catch a kid outside in socks and then look (perhaps with flaming eyes) at their feet, into their face, and back at their feet they always seems to start a little as if to say, “What are those doing on my feet?”

I promised solutions so here you go. Solution number one is to commit to being ok with children wearing mismatched socks. I realize this isn’t so much a solution to lost socks as it is a workaround, but it’s a win and I’ll take a W wherever I can get it when it comes to socks.

Solution number two is, when your kids are starting to walk, just buy 10 dozen pairs of socks in one color and be done with it. Sure, the same two socks will probably never be a pair again, but if they’re all the same you’ll never know. And you won’t hear, “I don’t have any socks” for at least a week.