A Modest Proposal for the Recovery of Lost Socks
.....Copyright 2000 by Joseph P. Infranco
One of the most widespread and under-reported problems in this country is a cause for alarm and, to my thinking, a national disgrace. To our shame, no major political, religious or social figure is even willing to address the problem openly. It is the problem of our lost socks. Virtually every American family has been affected by this bizarre phenomenon. Even now, if you were to pull open your sock drawer, I am certain you would encounter what we call the "orphaned" socks; the single lonely foot-covers, waiting guilelessly for the match that will not be found, even after extraordinary efforts in good lighting conditions where you can actually tell the difference between black and that really deep blue that confuses us all. What happens to these lost socks? And what is the reason for the conspiracy of silence surrounding their fate? It is estimated that the losses in this country alone amount to almost three billion dollars annually, although the estimate would be considerably lower if people purchased these socks the week after Christmas.
How can it be that socks simply disappear in the normal routine of household laundry? My wife assures me that she does not throw out my socks, although she also says she never throws out my important mail which she constantly does, and forever piles my things on the same spot on my desk no matter how many times I ask her not to; but anyone can make a mistake with mail and think the property tax bill is a junk solicitation. Anyway, the point is socks are not like junk mail, which arrives every day, and which is actually very easy to distinguish from really important mail if you will just look at it, for Pete's sake. Socks, unlike junk mail, are unlikely to be discarded accidentally. Yet, somehow and somewhere in the routine we call "laundry", disappear they do. The laundry route is simple enough to trace. Dirty socks, after a number of uses determined by the wearer, end up in a pile somewhere; perhaps in a hamper or on a floor, in a heap, except for the unfortunate white socks in gym lockers which are worn until weightlifters cannot bend them. They are then bundled and crammed into a washing machine where they are churned clean, and finally deposited in a dryer. Through informal study and examination, I have determined the most likely problem location: the dryer. Sure, we may drop an occasional sock on the way to the laundry area, but for the most part these are easily seen, usually in the dog's mouth. What makes me most suspicious about the dryer is that socks will actually cling to unnatural places, like the tops of dryers, where they will hide indefinitely if you are not clever enough to reach inside and feel around the uppermost portion of the chamber. Is there something more happening here than the glib "static cling" people would have us believe? Let's consider a few possibilities, the first being alien or extra-terrestrial involvement.
Initially, let me say I do not believe in extra-terrestrial visitations, alien abductions, and harbor serious doubts about intelligent life around the universe. Even if aliens could travel at the speed of light, which is theoretically impossible, it would take too long to get here from nearly anywhere (to say nothing of the time involved if round trip tickets are purchased.) Do the math for yourself. Secondly, how would aliens detect that we inhabit this humble third planet in a remote part of the universe? From our radio and television transmissions of "Strangers in the Night" traveling millions and billions of light years? Give me a break; it doesn't work outside of Hollywood plots. Thirdly, even if such aliens existed, knew we were here, and possessed theoretical ways of traveling unimaginable distances, why would they want to? It would be like the royal family in Buckingham Palace deciding it would be nice to visit a park in Bovill, Idaho to listen in on squirrel chatter, and, oh, perhaps while there abduct a few squirrels and perform exotic examinations on unmentionable body parts. You heard it here: swamp gas, satellites, and susceptible minds. Notwithstanding this tirade, I will grant one concession; the enigma of missing socks presents the best argument I know for alien visitation. Consider these further points. In any account of alien abductions or encounters, there is no record of anyone observing the aliens wearing socks. There is a claim that a spaceship crashed at a desert location in Roswell, New Mexico back in 1947. While at line in the supermarket, I observed actual and previously unreleased pictures (in a reputable tabloid) of the alien bodies found at the location. None were wearing socks! These initial findings are suggestive, though admittedly inconclusive. The reader may be justly skeptical, as I lack further evidence, besides which it is conceivable that some farmers got to the bodies first and yanked the socks and credit cards from the victims before the photographers arrived. But it is possible (I merely say possible) that aliens have a method to extract socks from dryers in a way that will cause no notice or alarm. It may be that they need these socks for personal comfort, or they may simply be nice souvenirs as we would bring home a miniature Eiffel Tower or Statue of Liberty. [Honestly, Zorg, the life forms there wear these on their lower extremities; or My grandpa visited earth and all I got was these crumby socks.] A less likely scenario would be that the artificial materials in socks can be used as fuel, and earth is a kind of "filling station" along a galactic route. If this could be confirmed, we could offer amenities from full service stops and clean windshields, or give away little prizes with fill-ups. We wouldn't be like certain stations that call themselves "full service" when all they do is pump gas, and which, if they were really honest, would label the islands "we pump" and "you pump", instead of "full service." Nor would we sit in a little bulletproof plexiglass cubicle watching t.v. while patrons scream at the pumps because a certain someone who doesn't want to be distracted turned on the wrong pump. No sir, we would have the real article; full service filling and comfort stations. Who knows; we may be the universe's chief source of the incredibly rare fuel called rayon. For now we can only speculate on these and other possibilities.
There is, however, another possible scenario, more appealing in that it does not require "far-fetched" claims involving aliens. I am speaking, of course, of a possible space- time fulcrum and dimensional warping formed inside clothes dryers. The typical clothes dryer spins clothes at about 10 MPH (by my observation) while generating measurable levels of heat and static electricity, particularly where fabric softener is neglected. It may be that this combination of spin velocity, heat and electricity creates a break or tear in the space-time continuum, described in literature as a chrono-synchrotronic infundibulum. This could create a "path" almost anywhere; from a landfill in New Jersey to an alternate universe, or any number of universes. It may, in fact, lead to a universe composed exclusively of lost socks (with perhaps an occasional handkerchief or pillowcase.) Admittedly much of this sounds far-fetched. Yet, the problem confronts us daily. Let the reader ask himself or herself honestly, here and now, at this very moment: do you suffer from a mysterious loss of socks? Wake up then, and take notice. Ask yourself the hard questions: where are they? Why doesn't anyone talk about this problem? And why are brown socks and black shoes so terrible when your pants cover them most of the time anyway, unless you forget and sit cross-legged? Most importantly, has anyone offered any better explanation than those advanced here?
This leads me to my modest proposal for the recovery of lost socks. Assuming the problem to be the dryer, enterprising scientists can proceed in the following way. I suggest constructing a 24 foot tall dryer, built exactly to scale, and fully functional. Inside the dryer, scientists can begin by placing probes wrapped in giant socks, and do thousands of trial runs to determine what happens to the probes. In time, the probes could be replaced by an animal, like a dog that refuses to stop chewing dropped socks and baseball gloves, even as the Russians did with a dog who I think was named Laika in one of those early sputnicks, and who, I suspect, must have chewed the baseball glove of some high-ranking Kremlin Commissar who gave the poor pooch the choice of mushing in Siberia or going into space. The real goal, though, would be to place a person wrapped in a huge sock in the dryer with one of those lo-jack car recovery probes on his person, who, if he disappeared, we could get the police to search for by claiming he is a missing 2000 B.M.W. sports coupe. Great care would have to be taken to make sure the human explorer, if missing, was not static clinging to the top inside the probe.
There is one further concern with the proposal which will have occurred to any far-thinking reader. What exactly do we do if decades worth of missing socks are suddenly found, say, in a parallel universe? The ethical questions are staggering; the emotional strain of millions of sock owners looking for lost matches, possibly under poor lighting conditions, is unthinkable. I have no solution as yet for these and other problems that would arise. Meanwhile, avoid wearing white socks with black shoes, and no, argyles do not go with everything.