I have told this story to three family members so far, and all three of them found it boring. But the situation was so temporarily MYSTIFYING, I cannot suppress the desire to continue to tell the story.
First you need backstory about my socks. (Hang in there.) In winter, I wear a pair of regular socks, and then a pair of thin wool socks over the regular socks. Then shoes. I put them on in this order: one regular sock, one wool sock, one shoe; other regular sock, other wool sock, other shoe. (“I like to take care of one foot at a time!”)
Because the wool socks aren’t against my skin, and because I have only two pairs of them, I usually re-wear them several times before putting them in the laundry, changing only the regular socks. I don’t usually wear the wool socks at night, though I occasionally do. When I take the wool socks off, I put them into the bin of shoes at the foot of my bed. (I am sorry that the foot of a bed is involved in this story; it seems unnecessarily confusing with all the other foot/feet references.)
Also, you should know that my regular socks are mostly different. That is, I have a pair of purple socks, a pair of brown-and-cream-striped socks, a pair of navy blue socks, a pair of grey socks with yellow toes and a yellow stripe, etc. There are some duplicates (I really like the grey ones with yellow toes/stripe so I bought another pair the next time I was at the store; the brown-and-cream-stripe ones were on a good clearance so I bought a couple of pairs), but mostly it’s a variety. I pick whatever pair looks best with that day’s shirt/sweater.
Okay, you did a good job listening to all that. Here is what happened: Yesterday I put on a regular sock, a wool sock, a shoe; then I put on the second regular sock, reached for the second wool sock—and found a regular sock that matched the other two regular socks.
First I assumed I must have put two wool socks on the first foot. But I checked, and no: I had one regular sock and one wool sock. Then I thought I must have put a wool sock on my second foot instead of a regular sock. But I checked, and no: I had a regular sock on. I looked again at the spare regular sock. Really, it felt to me like the beginning of a movie where there is some sort of glitch in reality. Like next the time travelers would come bursting through a wall.
This is the part where Paul said I had built up enough mystification and I could get to the part where I told him the solution, but I declined to skip anything, just as I decline to skip anything now. Because there was MORE CHECKING, and I feel that is relevant to the story. I checked my first foot again, in case I had had a mental lapse and not seen the socks correctly, but no: regular sock plus wool sock. I checked my second foot again: regular sock. I checked the remaining sock again: regular sock. I PINCHED each sock with my fingers to MAKE SURE each one was the material I thought it was. It COULD NOT BE that I had three regular socks and one wool sock, and yet that was what I had.
I thought perhaps I had somehow ended up with a third regular sock but ALSO had two wool socks. If I found the second wool sock, I could believe a reality where I had a third regular sock: perhaps it fell out of the laundry basket while I was doing laundry, for example. I checked the shoe bin: no wool sock. I checked the bed around me: no wool sock. I stood up to check under where I was sitting: no wool sock. I checked the floor all around the foot of the bed and shoe bin: no wool sock.
The part of this story that remains interesting to ME is how thoroughly derailing this was. I couldn’t think of a solution to this mystery, and it made me feel like something was wrong with my brain. Reality was clearly broken in some way, either externally or internally. It’s not that the socks were so important (it isn’t as if I woke up in a house I didn’t recognize, or discovered I was married to a different person), but a wool sock apparently turning into a regular sock still seemed QUITE IMPORTANT.
Well, I will tell you the solution now, because of course there was one. This was one of those situations where there were TWO things that went wrong, which is why it was so hard to solve—like when the checkbook won’t balance and it’s because there’s a missing item AND you accidentally wrote $101.34 instead of $101.43, so the two errors combine to make something almost impossible to figure out with the usual little checkbook-balancing tricks such as looking for an amount that matches (or doubles, or halves) the difference between the two end amounts. Anyway: (1) I’d worn the wool socks to bed the night before, which was unusual. (2) AND that morning I coincidentally chose a pair of regular socks that was a duplicate of the regular socks I’d worn the previous day, which was unlikely.
When I got out of bed, I intended to take off my doubled socks and put the regular ones in the laundry and the wool ones in my shoe bin; instead I put one regular sock and one wool sock into the laundry, and one regular sock and one wool sock into my shoe bin. Then I took a shower. Then, when I was getting dressed, I chose a pair of regular socks that were the same as the previous day’s socks. And I took the two socks out of my shoe bin without looking at them carefully. So then I had (1) one regular sock from the previous day, (2) one wool sock from the previous day, (3) two regular socks from the current day, which coincidentally matched the regular sock from the previous day. If I’d chosen a DIFFERENT pair of socks, and so had had two brown regular socks and one purple regular sock, I think I would have figured things out sooner. OR if my wool socks weren’t a brown similar to the regular socks, I might have noticed when I took the two socks out of the shoe bin.
Frankly, I’m impressed that you were able to figure out what happened at all with the levels of mix-ups that went into creating that confusion. I would have given up well before figuring it out.
Me too!
That was a very satisfying story. I know that feeling of a broken reality very well, and since I’m an engineer and CAN’T believe in a broken reality I’m driven to know the solution. But that feeling of disbelief where everything seems to spin apart, even if it began with a small, insignificant detail … oh, I recognize and SEE that feeling.
I love little stories like this (both in person and in writing) because they have a little suspense and a little interest and a conclusion that is generally pretty happy and satisfying. Who could ask for anything more?
If you ever doubt that you’re a “real” writer (and I sincerely hope you don’t, but IF), come back to this story. Because you took a topic that no one would think interesting and turned it into something funny and sweet and relatable (, PAUL).
Also the fact that you wrote (coined?) the phrase “Patriarchy Legs” yesterday proves your genius.
What Lee said. This could be opening of all kinds of quirky, charming books or stories and I would be ALL over them!
This is why I love Swistle and her blog. Stories like these.
Yesterday I woke up and reached for my phone on the nightstand, where I KNOW I had left it, because I specifically remembered watching the active-screen-glow fade away in the dark room before going to sleep. And it wasn’t there! It wasn’t on the floor either (as it might have been if I had knocked if off the nightstand). And I was the only one in the house last night, so for it to have physically moved anywhere *I* must have done it…unless someone broke in and moved my phone, or I have a ghost or a poltergeist, or or or… You can see I was starting to freak out a little bit. I finally found it in the bedcovers. But I have NO MEMORY of moving it or having it in bed. So, now I am a little freaked out over: did I really move my phone in the night, and what ELSE have I been doing while asleep that I have no memory of? It IS thoroughly derailing!!
I live alone, and always blame “a ghost” for anything that seems out of place. It couldn’t POSSIBLY be my middle-aged brain playing tricks on me or anything logical like that!
Do you take sleep meds like Ambien?
That was excruciating, and I adore you!
Maybe it’s because I read a lot of mystery novels, but as soon as you said the problem I was hoping you found the other sock in the hamper, because of course that is where it has to be. You gave us the clue when you said you put the wool ones someplace different. That is your opportunity for error, right there! Although if you had put two wool on one foot, that would be understandable too. I’m just glad you found it, because of that load of laundry was already in the wash it could have been forever a mystery!
This is so similar to Two Minute Mysteries! Or those logic problems they’d give us in elementary school. :) Or The Bloodhound Gang.
I am SO RELIEVED there was a solution. Because I was ready to send the police over to look for a murderer — you know that’s where my mind always goes first – the kind of murderer who would slowly torture you with reality-glitches like this, and eat away at your credibility with your family, until finally… you know, murdering.
WELL. I am very glad that’s not the case here! And I agree with others that your writing is so reliably awesome that I had no doubt (and was not disappointed, PAUL) that this story would be delightful.
Socks, shmocks; I still am trying to get over the fact that you apparently put shoes on in the bedroom as part of your getting-dressed routine. Are these indoor-only shoes? Are these perhaps your equivalent of slippers? Are they something you don in the winter, or is this a year-round thing? Enquiring minds want to know!
Ditto!
This is the second time Shawna has mentioned her indoor shoe phobia and now I kind of want Swistle to mention wearing shoes indoors, just in passing, to mess with her.
*raises eyebrows mischievously*
Slim has clearly been paying attention! :)
I want you to feel seen!
What I love about this story is that it highlights how when more than one thing deviates from the routine or expected, it can REALLY throw off finding the problem(s) and solution. Which is something that happens surprisingly often! Because I feel like we as humans are good at deducing what happened when one thing goes wrong, but if you pile multiple mistakes/coincidences/unexpected occurrences on top of one another, it can be VERY mystifying! I think a lot of books/movies use this as a plot device. And you figured it out!! Yay Swistle.
Well, I have to side with the family on this story, BUT I love so much that you referenced that All In The Family episode because I think of it literally every time I put on socks and shoes
Stuff like this happens to me all the time, except I never bother to figure out the solution, so it just remains a strange mystery in my mind.
The glitch in the matrix reminds me of the berenstain bears controversy. Apparently there is this whole sector of people who are positive that it USED to be berenstein bears instead. My siblings and I devoured those books and owned a million of them, and I have very good visual memory, and I’m very good at spelling and remembering names. I did a double take when my kids started getting the books from the library and I saw Berenstain Bears”, so I looked it up, and I’m not the only one who thinks something is screwy. Lol. I even texted my best friend and brother, who also have good name recall, and both of them had also though Berenstein.
Anyway. I love glitch in the matrix stuff, and I think it would have been much more interesting had your wool sock actually turned into a regular sock. lol.
I used to say Berensteen bears until I heard this track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCk7gb7b2MA
Now I can’t hear it any other way!
Ha! I am also impressed you figured out the mystery. Am I the only person wondering why you wear two pairs of socks? Don’t your feet get squished in your shoes? Or maybe I am just picturing doing this with my already wide feet!!
(One of my “startling expenses”—shoutout to Swistle of yore—is pricey socks. I loooovvvee Smartwool socks in winter and thorlos the rest of the year. But both are shockingly expensive for someone who was raised on Kmart clearance socks!!)
They’re nice THIN wool socks, like trouser socks. My feet do feel SNUG in my sneakers, but more cozy-snug than tight-snug. I would wear just wool socks, and thicker ones, but the wool bothers my skin. So I wear a layer of regular socks, then a thin layer of wool socks.
Despite what your family thought *I* enjoyed this tale. My assumption was going to be that the missing sock came off in the night and fell at the bottom of the bed between where the top sheet and bottom sheet meet. Only because that’s where most of our missing socks seem to turn up.
I also thought this might be where the sock was hiding!
If you want more wool socks, I’ve found the best prices for smartwool socks at Nordstrom rack! Online there too.
We have had pretty good luck with cheap Smartwool socks from Sierra Trading Post too, although I think they might be “slightly irregular” sometimes.
Clearly, I am the only one who got derailed on the third paragraph where you mentioned sleeping with socks on – and two pairs at that. My feet and legs have always been so hot when I’m in bed, it makes my head burst when I hear about people who can sleep in socks! You wouldn’t think that it would be such a problem living in Alaska, and yet.
I really appreciated it when you thanked us for listening. :D
That was the most boring story, but somehow i read it until the end :)
Donna
My grandmother had Alzheimer’s so whenever things like this happen to me I become overly stressed out and concerned that perhaps this is the first sign of early onset Alzheimer’s. I hate it.
YES. I had a little mini-crisis in the moment, like, “Are my perceptions the problem here??” and then a second little mini-crisis later, just thinking about how dementia seems like those sorts of moments but a lot of them.
Yep. My mother has dementia (no Alzheimer’s diagnosis as yet), and right now, this is sort of where she’s at (plus no short-term memory). Which is terrifying, because the other day, I looked all around the kitchen for the wet dishrag I knew I’d been carrying and had to figure out whether I left the kitchen WITHOUT REMEMBERING doing so or … accidentally put the rag into the just-started dishwasher when I put the pod in (it was the latter). This morning, I moved from the living room to the kitchen carrying a dirty glass and my phone, and I started to put the glass into my purse. Which meant I was about five seconds away from putting my phone into a sink full of dirty dishes. I turned 40 a few months ago, and the past few weeks have felt like this type of thing over and over again. Swistle, your story honestly feels Hitchcockian to me, that’s how much anxiety I feel about these things.
I must admit to also being confused about why you are wearing your shoes right off the bat in the morning. We only wear shoes when we are leaving the house and I wonder if they are like indoor slippers? And the wearing of socks in bed also distracted me from the otherwise riveting tale. Aside from that, I enjoyed that you pointed out that you were sorry for mentioning the foot of the bed in a story already ripe with many other ‘feet/foot’ references.
For what it’s worth, this sort of fits the Swiss cheese accident model in aviation. Essentially, it’s when you have a failure (a hole, or in your case putting the wool sock in the wrong bin) and that failure happens to line up with another failure (second hole, or grabbing a pair of socks that matched the ones from the day before). In aviation it can lead to catastrophe, which is why they have checklists and redundancies. Either way, I’m one of the people that love how interesting you made this story!
I read the whole thing from beginning to end — mostly because I am familiar with the situation of needing to share something and my family finding it dull. But here is my question…you clearly care about the colors/patterns of your regular socks. But then you cover them with plain wool socks? THAT is what confuses me…
Can you illuminate me on that point?
My feet are FREEZING. And warmth takes priority over all else.
I just wish you could find fun wool socks too!
I can’t tell you how much I was hoping that was a link to the All in the Family scene. I allude to that all the time and nobody ever gets it.