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Sock it to me
11/05/2007 09:14 - (SA)
Colleen Figg
There are certain immeasurable matters in this universe of ours that I know I will never, ever get to the bottom of. Socks and plastic containers are but two of these.
Others are much more straightforward, such as the Roswell Incident; viz. an alien craft either did or did not crash at the site and the resulting furore was or was not covered up by the US Government at the time.
Even the Philadelphia Experiment can be said to have banner carriers for or against. The ship and men apparently disappeared into a magnetically generated time warp and when they came back some went mad, or became part of the fabric of space-time, lodged in the bulkhead of the ship; whilst others denied the thing had ever happened.
Interesting skullduggery resulted with various people writing to various other people under pseudonyms, purporting to have solid information which was never handed over in the end. This was owing to the unreliability of humans in general and a loathing on the part of an editor for people who signed their letters using initials.
Again, there are strong allegiances to both camps and each camp seems to have its facts and allegations well under control.
But back to socks
Back to the socks. I have stopped buying them now and simply wear the mismatched mates of the Disappeared Ones; those sucked into the vacuum contained in the mysteries of the washing machine, never to be seen again.
At one time I used to wonder aloud where the socks had gone, I'd put two pairs in and only two socks came out, neither matching the other.
Then I used to search the house for the original mates to the remaining two, although I fully realised that I had put four socks into the machine. I was required to suspend belief for this exercise; but I found that wasn't too hard, because it was easier to accept that I had never put four socks into the machine in the first place than explain why only two came out.
This problem dogged me from the time I took over domestic chores on my own behalf and at one stage I found myself monitoring what happened to my own socks from the time they came off my feet until they went into the machine.
They remained present and accounted for, in all their uniform glory but when the machine stopped spinning, two socks, at odds, lurked at the bottom of the machine, unapologetic and silent.
It's the same with plastic containers. When you lend them out, in the event that they come back at all, the covers will rarely match the bottoms. At a glance they appear to fit, but when you try to use them, one corner remains disinclined to snap over the last part of the bottom.
Much as you try sealing the bottom two corners first and then the top two, or the top right first working clockwise, by the time you reach the last, you will have to concede the lid is not the right one at all.
And try looking up "mismatched socks" in Wikipedia, you'll be met with a vacant, electronic silence.
They're all in on it.
Send your comments to Colleen.
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