Missing Socks

It’s a given that washing machines eat socks. They are no doubt eating other items as well, but it’s the socks we happen to notice by virtue of the fact that they belong in pairs. If one is missing it sticks out like a sore thumb, especially when you’re folding clothes fresh from the dryer and there is suddenly only one where there had recently been two. You can’t help but to notice.

On the other hand, a non-sock item could vanish in the same fashion and not be missed until you were specifically looking for it at some later date. Your reaction then would more likely be “Where the heck did I put it?” rather than “The darn washer must have eaten it,” if you get my drift.

Non-believers will of course pooh-pooh the whole thing as fanciful and would have you believe there are “more reasonable” explanations for the missing items. Like maybe they got mixed up with someone else’s things or that static electricity may have left them clinging to other items. I haven’t found much validity in either argument, although I to be honest, I do recall one very uncomfortable moment that happened at work many years ago when a silky pair of unmentionables suddenly came slithering out from under the sleeve of my shirt as I was busy handing out medications, but that’s an anomaly and a tale for another time.  

Here at home, with my family now grown and gone, I have my own pretty tight little system of dealing with laundry. I have my own clothes hamper in one corner of my bedroom and only my own clothes go into it, always with the socks paired. I am the only one doing the laundry and I never mix it with anything else. One load goes down to the washroom. It goes into the washer, then into the dryer, and then back upstairs again where it is folded and put away. Like I said, a tight little system.

Yet as we speak my sock drawer has several unmatched white socks of different styles, 2 or 3 similarly afflicted black socks, and one very nice gray sock still searching for a partner.

The mechanics by which all of this occurs, discounting the above mentioned “sensible” theories that don’t seem to wash (if you’ll pardon the pun), aren’t really understood. As with other mysteries of the universe, while you may realize something strange is going on, you are at a loss to explain it.

And yes, I am familiar with the “washed over the top of the tub and pumped out the hose” school of thought. It always seemed to make a lot of sense to me until years ago when I was still living in Blackstone and our septic system went into failure. With a family of six and laundry piling up at a fairly alarming rate, I was temporarily forced to just run the hose out into the backyard until repairs to the system could be made. During that time, although socks were still going missing, not once did any appear on the back lawn. God knows where they went, but all that ever surfaced out there were wads of soggy gray lint.

Someone recently posited online that every sock that goes missing is, in fact, being replaced by an extra Tupperware lid, which I found interesting, but I’m still thinking that elves are probably responsible for the theft.

Don’t laugh. You remember the story about the shoemaker and the elves? Same sort of thing here except that in this case, the elves live deep in the nether regions of washing machines where they bide their time and do their mischief. They snag our socks and whatever else may strike their fancy and Lord only knows what they do with them. Perhaps they’re trading them on their own little elfin New York Sock Exchange, and in their more playful moments they toss items you have never seen in your life, pilfered no doubt from someone else’s laundry, back into your washer just to mess with your head.

For years I found odd bits of unfamiliar clothing and linens in my laundry, but I blamed it on my son Tom, who was a runner. Runners never seemed to pay much attention to who owned what. They would strip down before a race, throwing everything into a communal heap. Once the race was over they just reached down into the pile and got dressed. It didn’t matter that they might have someone else’s clothes, as long as they had something to wear home they were good with it. Same thing with towels. Their attitude when challenged on the practice was, “Hey, I had a towel before. I have a towel now. What’s the problem?”

So when I stumbled upon strange shirts I had never seen, running shorts I knew I had never purchased, and odd towels that matched no bathroom I’d ever had, after a while I didn’t give it a second thought. But Tom no longer lives here.

And I know it’s not just happening to me.

My sister Bev tells me about the jockey shorts that turned up in her laundry one day. They were the same size as her husband’s, but a different brand. Her sons denied ownership of the mysterious undies when questioned, so she folded them and put them away with her husband’s things.

“Where in the hell did these come from?” he wanted to know, holding them up for inspection and she explained how they had just turned up in the washing machine one day. She shared with him her theory that perhaps they had been a gift from the Gods, probably in payment for something else that had been taken. He looked at her like she had just grown a second head. I suppose it could have been worse. Had they been found under the seat of her car, explanations would have been even trickier and all the elves in the world couldn’t have helped then.

“There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

                                                                                                                                   -Hamlet