Mark Morford's "Sock Thief"

Up Your Sock Consciousness
Mark Morford 9/26/03

When your lover is a also a diabolical, unrepentant footwear thief. A cautionary tale (and a light disposable fluffy backup column given how the one I wanted to run didn't work out)
(By Mark Morford)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2003/09/26/notes092603.DTL&nl=fix

I think she eats them. Or vaporizes them. Or performs bizarre gorgeous naked incantation-filled candlelit midnight rituals involving snakes and magic herbs and flammable gasses. I cannot be certain. All I know is, they are never heard from again.

It happens all the time. It happens more than I care to admit. I am awed and embarrassed and more than a little nonplussed. I think it might be a sign. I think it might be the great trickster, winking, smirking, scratching his groin. Or it could be something far, far more diabolical.

My S.O. steals my socks. Not just occasionally, not just when her feet are freezing because she's been wearing sandals all day and needs to warm up her toes, not when her own socks have worn out and are full or holes or she just needs to borrow a pair in an emergency because she hasn't done laundry in a month. Would that it were so.

No, she does it mostly because she can. She steals my socks, men's socks, almost daily, right from my drawer, when I'm in the shower or making breakfast or still sleeping or just not paying sufficient attention, all innocent and humble and unsuspecting I am, and she does so without telling me. Ever.

She wears them without my knowledge and works them into a nice dirty grungy lather, then tosses them not back into the laundry pile, not even back into the drawer, but into teeming chthonic vortex that is her closet. Or under her bed. Or into the big bedside drawer with all the vibrators and slippery substances and the wonderful silicone things. Or into black hole of one of her plethoric backpacks or purses or duffel bags or magic omnipotent sock-eating overnight bags.

I know this happens. I have caught her, now and then, as she undresses, removing a pair of my own socks from her feet and I'm all, hey! And she's like, what? And I'm like, pointing down at her feet, at a pair of brand-new men's socks that I hadn't even worn yet and which I thought I somehow lost weeks ago or left at the store or never bought in the first place and figured I must've just dreamt the whole thing in a wine-thick hallucinogenic fog. And she's like, oh yeah, are these yours? And I'm like, hey!

I know this, further, because my sock drawer empties at a truly astounding rate, just after laundry day. All fresh pairs on Monday, maybe a nice baker's dozen of lovely clean men's socks all eager and ready to be worn and ready to last me a good coupla weeks, minimum. Ha. Such wishful thinking. You fool.

And here's Friday and I'm lucky if there's two old pairs left, scrunched in the back of the drawer, grungy old emergency socks you keep in case of, you know, flood, or earthquake, or apocalypse Second Coming Rapture. I can only stare into the drawer and sigh heavily. She has struck again.

I am stumped. I am stupefied. She just giggles, shrugs. She knows she steals them. She admits as much. Yet she remains unapologetic, unrepentant. This is the way it is.

I have tried tactics. I have worked to thwart. I have gone so far as to buy her innumerable pairs of socks of her own, in a vain attempt to impede this bizarre habit, this peculiar problem.

I have stopped by Ross DFL and bought her pair after pair of cute little DKNY socklettes and put them in the drawer next to mine, just for her. I have suffered the bleary-eyed soul-sucking consumerist phantasmagoria that is Costco and bought her two dozen pair (that's 24 pair) of Jockey socklettes and veritably stuffed her own sock drawer to the brim.

It matters not. They vanished. All of them, every single pair, in under a month. She has no idea where. Or how. Or why. Or when. But they are gone. All of them. So of course, she went back to stealing mine.

She remains undaunted. She is blithely apathetic. She believes I am excessively sock conscious, that it is perhaps one of her soul's duties in this lifetime to raise my sock consciousness to a level whereby I can release my attachment to warm cotton tube-like foot garmentage and let the sock energy roam free, let the socks themselves pass into and out of our lives without constraint, without tying them down, without forcing them into drawers -- and without, even, forcing them to match.

Oh yes. Perhaps I failed to mention. She not only steals them, she steals them *individually*. Mismatched. I bundle them up together in matched pairs and she unbundles them and grabs two different ones, leaving a drawer of stragglers and loners and stranded orphans, sucking their little sock thumbs off in the corner of the drawer, wondering what happened to all the joy in the world.

She believes this is good for the socks, lets them experience different things, partnerings, uneven feet. I disagree. I tell her I think they belong together. They are sole mates. She thinks my little pun is very cute. She steals them anyway.

She is not alone. I have noticed a parallel. My sister's husband, a wonderful guy who is of noble character and generous heart whom I love dearly, he steals my sister's socks. He does. By the drawerful.

Not the little socklettes, but her bigger socks, tube socks and sports socks and even woman-sized dress socks and the like. Steals them and wears them and never tells her and they, too, vanish into the ether, and it drives her nuts and he just laughs, shrugs. What's the big deal? he asks. Let the socks roam free.

When we gather for functions, when my sister and I get together, questions regarding the sock phenomenon invariably are raised. My brother-in-law and my lovely S.O., they merely pass each other knowing glances, wry grins. They are in on something. They have a secret. They have true sock consciousness. This is the way it is.

So then. I am attempting revenge. I am working my own consciousness raising. I have, of course, begun to steal her thong underwear. Fun for a little while, but I gotta admit, the buzz tends to wear off rather quickly. Man, they do they ever ride up.