A Very Selfish Birthday Gift

I've sunk to a whole new low.  I've defied the natural laws and true spirit of gift giving.   The fact is that I recently gave a birthday gift that I put A LOT of thought into, however, my sad confession is that I wasn't really thinking of the person who was to receive the gift as much as I was thinking selfishly about myself.  It was all perniciously premeditated and, well, a bit narcissistic on my part.

But I justified the whole nefarious affair by categorizing my gift as "friendly philanthropy" instead of calling it what it really was:
An "egotistical endowment".

We're not talking about a pricey gift mind you.  Just a package of socks as a matter of fact.  But the important part of the whole gift was that they were LOW CUT socks.

These low cut socks were for my big brother's 43rd birthday.  He's just two years older than me, which was an extremely important factor in my decision to give him this sort of practical yet highly necessary gift.

My decision for this purchase was based upon that fact that he has, to my great shock and horror, spent the better part of the summer sporting summer shorts with ghastly TALL WHITE socks and paired them with an even brighter more jarringly white shade of tennis shoes. (yep, that's him in the hat...)

I cannot think of anything that screams "OLD GUY" more than that.  Of course if he wants to flaunt his aged-ness it really should be his right, right?  WRONG!

Wrong because he and I are practically the same age.  We were one year apart in school for goodness sake!  So if he's sporting the crusty old man look already what in the heck does that say about me?  His not-too-much-younger sister?  For the love of all that's youthful, can't he think about others?  Particularly me?  And if not me, perhaps he should consider his poor wife Wendy.  She's still a hot and youthful mama.  Therefore sporting such an offensively old look really tarnishes not only his sister's but his wife's youthful appearance.  That's two counts of premature aging.  Short of locking him up, I think this sort of public sock spectacle must be stopped.  And so stop it I did...with a simple and thoughtfully deliberate birthday gift.

And next year, I plan on giving him a new and less Amish-looking hat.

Sock Scandal

A big scandal has broken out.  There has begun, in the dark corners of PTA meetings, hushed whispers behind my back amongst the mothers who know my youngest son Connor.  Apparently they've been discussing my derelict duties as a mis-fit mother in a certain unforgivable area.  In the polls of public opinion, this unforgivable flaw has brought my approval ratings to an all-time low.  And worse, my son has become a charity case!

But I must clear the air.  Quite literally too.  Because my son's shoes stink.  Which is due to the fact that his feet stink.  Which, according to the scandal of all scandals, is because, allegedly, the poor kid doesn't own any socks.

What kind of mother sends her kids out into the cold cruel world with no socks?
Yep, you guessed it...I do!

The whole thing stinks.  I'm officially confessing that my son  Connor is a Sock Bandit!  He's been swindling mothers everywhere into feeling sorry for him in an evil ploy to come home wearing clean, fresh borrowed socks.  He's even got mothers who volunteer to let him keep the socks, as if by no other means will the poor downtrodden kid get a pair of socks.  And once, the dastardly dude even came home with a brand new package of socks!  A textbook case of sock swindling if you ask me.

The real truth is that the C-man can't keep his socks on.  He absolutely refuses to.  Which means he takes them off and can never find a pair to wear because he can't remember where he took them off and left them.

No matter where he goes, he almost always goes sock-less (though he never fails to return from someones house with a new pair on).  Even at church, all dressed up in a suit and tie, looking all dapper and distinguished, he's still hiding a stinky little secret.  Underneath it all (feel free to peek if you go to my church!) he's got stinky bare feet sweating inside his nice polished shoes!

See this bin of clean socks...

...not a single stinkin' match to be found in it!  NOT ONE.  The darn thing is overflowing with unmatchable socks.  Which is IMPOSSIBLE, since I only buy the same kind of socks for everyone in the house.  How is it that there are perhaps 30 or so possible brands of socks out there in the universe and yet I have a basket full of 80 socks that are completely incompatible?

The pile grows and grows as if they're asexual entities that multiply by themselves.  Bet my biology teacher never knew that about the sock species.

Summer, my blissful friend, has helped to uncover the truth.  While I was out weeding the other day, I discovered where the other half live...

Let's make a game of it, shall we?  Something like "Where's Waldo?" only we'll call this game:

"Where's the Sock-o?"

A little closer in and you can see this cache of socks 

by the trampoline is the mother-lode...

These pesky little vermin are like an infestation that has overtaken my yard--my six acre yard to be exact!  And there's no pest control to call to rid me of these demons.  Though perhaps this is why there are never any deer eating our shrubs.  Stinky Socks must scare them away!

And now I've uncovered the real truth-- that the kid totally mismanages his socks--that leaves me with not only a bad reputation amongst the other mothers, but worse, a basket full of socks I refer to as "Sock Hell".  A place where all the socks unfortunate enough to make it into the laundry cycle get unfairly banished to a bin where they will never see the light of day again or feel the warmth inside Connor's very stinky shoes, all because they got unfairly separated from their comrade.

And while we're on the subject of purgatory, I have a fear one day that if I end up being sentenced, after this mortal life is over, to serve my time in perdition for all my misdeeds, I'm sure the devil will have me matching an endless bin of unmatchable socks while being forced to watch re-runs of the Golden Girls and Touched by an Angel.  Because I certainly can't think of anything worse.

All I can say is that I'm just glad it's flip-flop weather right now.

Sock Strategies

As usual I've been avoiding the laundry room and sure enough when Monday morning came, we had a full-blown sock crisis on our hands.

Little girls who like to match do not like to go to school with mis-matched socks.  I tried to reassure "miss matchy" that if she kept her shoes on the whole day nobody at school would know one said "Monday" and one said "Saturday" but this didn't seem to alleviate her sock stress.  When I tried to optimistically point out they were both in shades of purple, I was met with a deep scowl.

Who puts days of the week on socks anyway?  These are contraband socks and will most certainly be confiscated during the next laundry cycle.  I know I didn't buy these, and if I didn't, who the heck did?  That's a weird gift to give a kid.  Can you imagine?

"Here kid, I bought you some socks."

It sounds like something a grandmother would do.  I won't name names, but there are two grammas which fall suspiciously into the devious crime category of "fancy name-of-the-week sock smuggler".

To minimize sock stress, my strategy has always been to buy the same socks for everyone except for me; SOLID WHITE.  This way, in the likely event I've avoided doing the laundry, people in the house will always manage to find a quasi-match.  In a pinch, they can wear one big dad's sock and one little sister's sock and, "voila!" they appear to the casual observer as if they match!  One may feel way too big, and one waaaay too small, but nobody at school will ever know!  (Our dirty little family secret.)  And, since mine are different,  there's the added bonus that I'll know when someone in the house has stolen mine.  I know, you may find this both an underhanded and selfish Sock Strategy, but I call it street smarts. 

This is also why I'd never buy my kids the underwear that says the days of the week either.  Somebody would find out that at least once a week, it's very likely that one of my kids would manage to slip through the system and go to school with underwear that would say "Monday" on both Monday AND Tuesday.  Heaven knows we've got enough trouble with socks, we certainly don't need underwear trouble too.