Socks as People

 Today, I found one sock under the bed. I don’t understand where the other one went—maybe it never came back after the big wash. Perhaps the washing machine or dryer separated this pair forever, since too much time has passed to start looking for the second sock. Maybe another family took it by mistake and, not finding its pair, did what’s usually done in such cases—left it to gather dust, giving both themselves and the sock hope that it might one day be useful, knowing deep down that without its pair, it’ll never be a sock again, at best just a rag. They’re unlikely to find a mate for it—it was a bit below average size and had a special branded pattern. The more unique the sock, the less chance it has of meeting its match.

Socks are born to be together. Plain socks are easier to replace. If the socks are monotonous or sold as several identical pairs, they’re interchangeable, and losing one or two isn’t a tragedy, but at the same time, it’s even sadder because if they’re so easy to replace, it means there was nothing interesting or original about them; they never lived for themselves. They couldn’t boast of the beauty of an embroidered pattern, the quality of superior material, or even a simple but cheerful joke. They live only to warm someone’s feet. Such a fate might be much worse than the whole horror of proud loneliness for a sock with individual qualities, which will now gather dust on my shelf until I find a use for it unrelated to its destiny or throw it out to the dump…

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