Having been married for 47 years there has always been one thing that has made me go umm…
This strange thing continues through the generations and is now happening for the grandchildren we raise. SOCKS, missing socks. To be clear: I seem to be forever buying new socks. I know the sales assistant at the local store by name, she laughs and says ‘more socks?’. I check the children coming in from school each day and yes they are wearing their socks, so a search begins. I search their rooms and even lower my poor old body to scramble under their beds. I find things that the grandies claimed they had lost. A homework book (why am I not surprised?), three half eaten apple cores, various pens and pencils but no socks! So I decide to do a clean-up and fold of all their clothing in their draws. Nope, still no socks, but there were the remains of a couple of school lunches, growing that green mould!
I questioned the family yet again, where are all the socks? ‘We put them in the washing machine,’ echoed my two darlings. I would get to the bottom of this mystery, somehow.
I carefully pop them into the washing load, the pair of them go in but still only one comes out. Occasionally a pair does re-emerge. This event does not discriminate at all, be it Pop’s, grandchildren’s or indeed my socks. Where do they go? Does the washing machine disintegrate them and wash just one of them down the drain? Is there a secret trap door inside the machine that just collects one sock from each pair in demand for payment? Or indeed have we been invaded by some worm like alien creature that lives in our machines and has a liking for just one sock? Well, whatever is happening I have had enough! Pop’s socks now are all the same colour and brand as so are the grandchildren’s and mine. And yet they still go missing! Mystery not solved and sales assistant is still laughing. But now we do not have to throw the odd one away. These socks need educating! And what is with the technology of my washing machine?