My sock hell - two years on

More than two years after I blogged about my matching socks hell, my torment isn’t getting much better.

Notwithstanding numerous donations of socks, the problem never seems to improve. Instead the new socks seem to fall into a dark hole for socks and I wonder if somewhere in the house there isn’t a missing vault for socks that go missing in action.

Today I fear the sock diaspora is spreading. Both Jackson and Zara went to school with unmatching socks too, although at least there was some continuity of color.

I expected a full frontal attack from the hatchet faced lady at the church playgroup but she surprised me with a pincer movement.

“You have brought his diapers?”

(cue question cum statement dilemma)

“What diapers? – It wasn’t on the form.”

By the form I meant her spiky “cuddlegram” and I immediately knew I’d made a mistake because I hadn’t read any of these for months.

“has been for the last two days," - her bulldog chewing a wasp expression turns into that of a meercat chomping on a thorn bush.

“OK, bye then.”

I went away wondering if the socks mismatch will be on tonight’s bitchslap that is the cuddlegram.

Here's my original post in 2009.

I have no sympathy for some of the figures in history who claim to have had dilemmas.



Did Julius Caesar agonize about crossing the Rubicon? Did Napoleon think should I, shouldn't I invade Russia and have to eat his horses? What about Robert the Bruce in his cold, abject cave when he saw a spider struggling to build a web and resolved to try, try again?


Tis all insignificant compared to the dilemma I have every morning when I attempt to find matching socks.


There are days when I've woken up earlier than the rooster for an early assignment or my red eye course on a Saturday. I've had enough time to slowly read War and Peace backwards, underlining all the names with "ski" in them.


Still, one way or another, I have come unstuck in the socks pile, lost my temper, hurled disparate apparel at the cat and ended up running out late wearing one red sock and one blue one.


My course colleagues didn't buy my excuse I was making a patriotic gesture.


My wife can't believe I own so many brown colored socks by the same manufacturer of such crazily different designs and periodically asks me if I was on LSD when I chose them at Wal-Mart.


Well, of course you have to be on LSD in Wal-Mart just to survive the experience.


To be fair I've never taken LSD: I was concerned by those drug talks at school when they warned you about 'flashbacks.' Admittedly if you got a flashback and you were again in Wal-Mart I'd call that a bonus.


In retrospect buying a job lot of the same socks would have made a lot more sense but mornings just wouldn't be mornings if everything matched.

Incidentally I apologize for not responsding to all the fantastic comments to my last post.  Blogger will no longer allow me to comment on my blog, which is somewhat sucky as it is was my blog when I last looked.