Sock It To Me

Monkey assists me with a sock operation.

As an analytical a-hole, sometimes I do ordinary things in a very weird way. Case in point: One week ago today, in the morning, I was doing some last minute packing for the vacation that I’m currently on and wrap up today. We head for home in a few minutes.

I asked my wife: You think I should use the over-the-shoulder bag I always use for traveling, or use the actual suitcase for once since this will be a whole week?

She suggested the suitcase. She then asked if she could use some of it. “Sure,” I said, since above all else I am a sap. She promptly filled it using 95% of the space and said the other “half” was for me. I realized the bag would have been a big step up for me.

I attacked the problem of packing like any reasonable logician would. My heroes have always been Vulcans. I began by calculating the number of vacation days. Then I packed underwear and pairs of socks in exactly the same quantity. It seemed a logical way to go about it.

I grabbed a bunch of shirts on hangers, some for bumming around and some for dining. I was supposed to also grab a few pair of extra jeans at the same time. Oops. One pair of pants for the whole vacation. That was a bit of a snafu.

A couple pairs of shorts and shoes for different activities and I was done. I did a little dance and bragged to my wife about my fast packing skills. I was even ready to leave on time.

About mid-way through our vacation there came a little problem, however. Besides stinky pants that had gone to the beach several times and been worn on an ocean fishing voyage. I ran out of socks.

At first I thought it was merely a suitcase problem. After all it was quite hard to find anything that belonged to me in my own suitcase due to the volume of my wife’s stuff. A bit of digging proved this theory wrong. There was still plenty of underwear.

I was totally flummoxed by the situation. I pointed it out to my wife. If I was a better listener no doubt I would have noticed the quiet chuckle and wry grin. Instead I railed about how inconceivable the situation.

“I don’t get it,” I said for the umpteenth time. “This just doesn’t make sense. I know I packed them in the same amount. I think I’m going insane in my old age.”

Every day this process repeated until I was out. I then shifted modes and started going through my impromptu laundry pile for the cleanest dirty socks to get me through the day.

Finally, yesterday, the mystery was solved. I was doing my daily scientific complaining about the situation when I noticed something peculiar about my wife. A light bulb went off.

“Spill it,” I demanded. “What do you know about this?”

At first she refused but I was insistent. My belief in my own sanity was on the line and I was beyond cracking up. She knew something! I could smell it.

I had to resort to torture (thank you, Cheney!) but at least she spilled the beans. Earlier in the week her brother had run out of socks so he’d helped himself to mine.

I was incredulous. “You knew about this?”

She said not at first, but eventually the caper had become known to her, and that she found it increasingly hard to contain her snickers during my daily ritual of praying to the sock gods. Finally she hadn’t been able to contain herself any longer.

Another vacation mystery solved courtesy of your Guru of Negativity. Now put a sock in it because I am done.

This has been yet another vacation post brought to your courtesy of my iPod, small little motherfucker that it is. My finger will now go away to die. Look at that. How cute! It’s waving goodbye to us all. Adios muchacho!