The disappearing sock: caught in the act
You’ve all had it happen. You do your laundry, and although you started out with several matching pairs of socks you wind up with a singleton or two.
What happened? I’ve read a number of explanations, including that the socks often get sucked into the washer, but I’m not sure I believed it until today when, using a front-loading machine, I saved one of my socks from oblivion.
When the cycle was finished and I was removing my clothes to put them into the dryer, there it was: a black sock, same color as the machine’s innards, caught in a slot near the opening with only an inch or so peeking out, like a character in those old movies who starts sinking into quicksand and winds up with only his head peeking out.
I pulled, and the entire sock emerged. It was sopping wet, never having partaken properly of the spin cycle, since it had been hiding within the depths of the machine.
It wasn’t much of an accomplishment. But somehow it gave me an inordinate amount of satisfaction.
I never managed to recover any of my socks. I think they go into a black hole.
I always assumed that socks were just part of the natural diet of washing machines.
kaba:
Well, I’m determined to starve mine.
Carol Burnett says she thinks that wire coat hangers copulate in secret and the litters end up on the floor of the closet.
I never would have believed it. I have, finally, come to believe you, at least in first hand things. And more, really, I just don’t always agree. Thanks for… verifying what I had thought to be a myth. Might have to check my machine.
Now I know!
Beverly: in my house, it’s books that breed. My beloved Kindle has had some contraceptive effect, but the books are not completely discouraged. Also, I think they feed their young with my missing socks.
Sheesh, Neo. Everybody knows that socks in the washer or dryer do not disappear. They just change into wire coat hangers from the dry cleaner in your closet.
Do I have to tell you everything?
One consequence of the disappearing sock syndrome is that I have reduced the number of types of socks I purchase. I go for generics, which is not the sock route of President George HW Bush. That way, if one sock is missing, I am missing one out of a dozen, not one out of two individual socks.
Neo’s is the first example I have come across of someone actually retrieving a lost sock.
I believe in the existence of an animal postulated by Terry Pratchett, the Eater of Socks. https://img.neoseeker.com/v_concept_art.php?caid=3048
A mystery of the ages, long the fodder of stand-up comedians, the subject of laundry room soliloquies, and the source of furrowed brows reflected in the gorgon’s eye of the washing machine, solved at last. Is there ANYTHING Neo Neo can’t do?
In a recent discovery, astronomers have announced that one of Saturn’s rings appears to be composed of odd socks and lost luggage.
An old Jules Feiffer cartoon addressed the Sock Wars. In the last panel, having put no socks in the washer, he finds all his laundry is gone except for a body stocking (which he didn’t put in) with a note in it reading Socks! I must have more socks!
It wasn’t much of an accomplishment. But somehow it gave me an inordinate amount of satisfaction.
Don’t be so modest, Neo. Solving a mystery that has long baffled and bedeviled humanity is a major accomplishment. It’s natural that you’d feel satisfied.
I appreciate the tip and will look for similar evidence. Until then, I cannot totally dismiss my Sock Gremlin Theory.
Why is it that sock-puppets do not seem to suffer a similar fate?
Obama is still in the white house.
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