Dirty Socks

Socks; what a great invention. In the winter they keep you feet warm and toasty, in the summer they keep your sneakers from giving you blisters. Just think about it, socks are merely simple cloth tubes with a little Lycra in them to help them stay up. The hole at the top is always big enough, no matter how big you are, to slip your foot into, and of course, big enough to slip your foot out of as well, right?
Well if you are you, that may be correct and if you are me, then I’d agree also, but if you are one of the guys living in my house you’d be scratching you head in confusion
because for you, socks are very hard to get off.
If you’re one of the guys living in my house you never take your socks off, right-side-out, instead you grab the top edge and roll that sock down until it’s free of your foot; an inside out, sweaty glob of cotton. In the spring and fall these little globs can be full of thousands of little splinters of mulch, which provide hours of picking–out-the-mulch fun.
Sometimes these globs are clotted with grass clippings from the yard, the effect, when the sock is pulled right side out again, is much like a cheery little ticker tape parade right in front of the washer. But the best and most mysterious globs are the ones that are sopping wet.
I’ve wavered back and forth, from refusing to touch, let alone clean these socks, to throwing them into the washer in their tight, cue-ball shapes, (only with the offender’s clothes of course). Since my son has been spending his mornings running around at football camp and his afternoons mowing a few lawns for the neighbors, I’ve taken to poking his socks into the basket with a yard stick and throwing them into the wash as is. I figure, he can have the ticker tape parade in his own room, the only one he’s responsible for vacuuming.