Legend has it that Tom Brady once told a teammate that if he ever made it in the NFL, all he would want is a fresh pair of socks every day. I can’t say I have much in common with him, but Tom’s got me on the sock thing. Boy, do I love a good pair of socks. All the more so because they are a rare commodity in my household.
I know I’m not alone in this. I’ve complained about it to other parents while watching our kids play sports, and it’s clear that nine families out of ten are dealing with an epidemic of sock murderers. Yet there we are, every Saturday morning and on weekday afternoons, cheering these criminals on like they didn’t do anything wrong at all. What is wrong with us?
Parents watching, freezing their butts off—probably because they don’t have any socks.
An American Epidemic
If you have kids—particularly teenagers—you know what I’m talking about. Despite a supposedly growing prefrontal cortex, somewhere between ages nine and eleven, kids all over America decide to start walking around outside without their shoes, but WITH socks on. Huh? What is this? And they do it with greater frequency as they get older, like they are purposely trying to unlearn the purpose of a sock. Or destroy them. The number of socks we’ve had that develop holes within the first week of use is uncanny. Even worse, they often take my socks to do it. Mine. The pater familias. The guy who’s buying all of these socks. Where’s the respect?
To combat this, I’ve tried getting everyone to declare which socks are theirs and to take care of them, but that was an epic failure. Nobody cared. They still took mine. I suppose they figure that when I get too frustrated because I can’t find my socks, I’ll have no problem buying new ones for them to ruin. Socks are like the phone charger of the clothing world. Oh, I’m out of socks. I’ll just go in here… and yep, there’s some of Dad’s. But let’s leave one behind so he isn’t on to us…
♫ One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do… ♫
Socks Are Sacred
To express how sacred socks are to me, I’ve told my children that all I want for Christmas each year is socks. White ones. And they’ve tried to follow through, but I usually get black ones, or white ones that are at the length they want, so it’s a certainty I’ll never wear them. I don’t think it’s intentional; just details they didn’t think worth considering. So rather than having a reasonable amount of socks that we all manage on our own and properly take care of (because socks have gotten quite expensive to boot), we waste an inordinate amount of money on socks, stockpiling them until we’re buried in ’em. Clearly, the patients are running the asylum.
But what I can’t figure out for the life of me is why do kids come home, with shoes on, and then take the shoes off to go back outside? Like, immediately? I don’t remember Gen Xers doing this. We were either in shoes or barefoot. In fact, I remember a lot of smelly shoes because we were wearing sneakers without socks. But Gen Z and now Gen Alpha? Sock murderers, the lot of them. Either an entire generation of kids is having a massive brain fart, or they are up to something. Why can’t they just go back to normal things like leaving their bikes in the middle of the road to harass local traffic? Or put tailpipe whistles in parked cars to watch people freak out from the new sound in their muffler? Or go cable clicking, making people think their TVs are possessed? Ah, those were the good old days. Just please leave my socks alone. The socks are sacred.