Socks for Socks

These socks are the greatest! They came in the post, this morning, along with two other pairs. There's a striped pair in the same style, and a light brown fleecy pair (which bears an amusing resemblance to a set of camel toes.)

a) A pair with bells on. My father got those for me after I snuck up on him one time too many. (He nearly jumped into the fire. Bellowed like an ox, to boot.) I wasn't sneaking on purpose. I'm a lazy walker, is all. I shuffle my feet along the floor, so you don't get the usual padding noises.

b) A pair with wee rubber traction pads on the bottoms. Those were also bought with a view to behaviour modification. Apparently, my fifth-grade teacher took exception to my sliding down the hallways in my stocking feet. She said I was "interfering with everyone else's right to a safe educational environment." She said that a lot. She also said "tough beans."

c) Two wee flowery pairs with folded-down tops. Mother referred to them as "ballet socks," though I never got to dance in them.

d) A pair with clown faces knitted into them, with pom-poms for noses. They were bulky, and puffed up my trouserlegs, but I wore 'em holey anyhow.

Though lists with fewer than eight items bother me on a deep and visceral level, I must leave this one with four. I have, sad to say, led a largely sock-free life. In my schooldays, kids were always stealing mine*. In later years, they succumbed to holes or stains, or vanished somewhere between washer and dryer.

This time, none of that nonsense is going to happen. I've reformed. (And if I haven't, at least I got a picture before disaster struck.)

* That was my excuse, anyway. More likely, I simply mislaid them. The same thing happened with my pencils. Every day, I'd be mooching round the teacher's desk: "Somebody stole my pencil!" Teachers started saving the bitten pencils off the floor for me. When I cleaned out my locker at the end of primary school, it yielded several hundred pencils.