Literature

Jonathan and the Mystery of the Missing Socks

While Jonathan was still in high school, he and I often wore the same kind of white sport socks, made by Champion, purchased in sixpacks at CostCo. This led to a neverending conflict because he never seemed to have any clean ones and he would take mine from my bedroom. That would have been okay, except he wore them around the house and even outdoors without any shoes, so the bottoms quickly deteriorated and became hopelessly soiled and dark. I probably screamed at him more for taking my socks than anything else.

Regardless of how many new packs I bought for him and myself, the problem would never go away. I think I must have bought a hundred packs tryiing to fix the problem. I even marked all my socks with a magic marker and dared him to take them. He did.

Some years later after Jon had left I was cleaning out his closet and decided to take a look into the attic which could be accessed from his closet. As I lifted the trap door and shined a light into the darkness, my eyes fell upon a very strange and enlightening sight. There scattered across the rafters in the attic were hundreds of dirty white socks. Washing them had become too great a chore.