Now that I’ve caught my breath from the wire coat hanger sub-thread, I think I have an explanation that requires somewhat less of a stretch of the imagination.
How many times have you tried matching socks and found that you had two socks left; one black, one dark navy.
No sock has disappeared. One has simply changed colors subtly. I suspect that sock manufactures must use two different yarns for each pair of socks, but dye them all in the same vat. Since the different yarns have different degrees of color fastness, they slowly begin to match less well with each repeated washing.
So, while you think you’ve lost two socks, one black and one navy; in fact they were a pair, but never will be again.
P.S. My 12 y.o. stepson and I are starting a website. Check it out http://www.geocities.com/assistant_uwc
The sock/coathanger connection is bullshit. Socks do not metamorphose into coathangers. The coathangers are mating and breeding in your closet. The late Erma Bombeck described this phenomenon in one of her columns.
Now…
Sometimes the socks come back. I have gotten into the habit of tossing my socks that have come unmated due to the Laundry Phenomenon into a box. I periodically go through the box and match socks up with mateless socks in this week’s laundry. I have about an eighy percent success rate in re-matching socks. The process takes time, you won’t be able to re-match socks with each weeks laundry, but eventually most of the lost socks do return…
I’d have to go with interdimensional travel. There’s no way that my missing socks are transmutating into my other socks from the use of different yarn. I refuse to believe that one of my currently absent socks, gray with orange goldfish, has faded into anything but a light gray sock with peach goldfish. I sincerely doubt that it has become an olive green argyle, the other sock that currently lacks a match.
We have one washer and one dryer in our building, and I think they must both be portals through which my socks disappear. Almost every time I do a load of wash, I notice a stray screw lying in the washer or dryer when I remove my clothes. At first I thought that those old machines must simply be falling apart, but I have found at least 15 screws of different size and shape, and the machines still work.
My socks have always gone missing in the wash here and there, but after reading this thread, I have come to the conclusion that both of those laundry machines are gateways to some parallel universe that desparately needs one sock from every pair I own. The theives then leave me a loose screw in exchange for each sock. Maybe screws are valuable currency in their world and they consider it a fair trade, or they just have a lot of screws to spare and think it’s funny to watch me try to figure out where the hell all the screws keep coming from. One thing is for certain - the proprietors of that universe must have a project or program for stray socks like no other, because mine never come home.
Hmmm…OTOH, once they find out how hard it is to land a job out in the cut-throat world, even with an iron-clad degree and a cutting-edge education, they may come back to the only home they’ve ever known and spend years lounging around the knife drawer, living off the flatware of the land.
But this is getting a little off-topic. I’ll say no more on the subject.
whatcha all been thinking? huh? the real reason is that they all get seperated into different wash sessions, and ya’ll aren’t intellegent enuff to realize it.
You people are obviously clueless. Butter knives and socks and the like don’t just disappear. What you need to realize is that you are all just figments of my imagination. You don’t exist, ergo, your butter knives and socks don’t exist either, and since they don’t exist, they can’t disappear.
YEAH THATS RIGHT, NOW I KNOW WHERE MY SOCKS ENDED UP, ONE NIGHT WHILE I WAS WATCHING THE NEWS. I KNEW MY SOCKS WERE COVERING THE OSCARS THAT WERE STOLEN. YOU CAN TELL WHEN ITS YOUR DIRTY LOUNDRY.
I once read a reference to a story that suggests the wire coathanger life cycle begins with paperclips, matures to coathangers and finally evolves into shopping trolleys.
Are the Christmas-ornament-hanger juveniles a new species?
I not only can’t find matches for all of my socks, some of the mismatched ones don’t even look familiar. I don’t remember buying them. I suspect some of them belong to the rest of you.
Man, the more of this thread i read, the more creeped out i get. Maybe all the socks and knives and comma’s left on their own. Maybe they were mad at us. Now they are all hiding and plotting revenge. Or maybe not. I don’t know, but If i see a huge army of single socks, commas, and butter knives marchin down the street, I’m gonna run!!!
i have reason to believe that the dryer isn’t always to blame for this. In my house, we don’t use a dryer, insted the clothes get hung up to dry, but i’ve still got one heck of a lot of single socks. I put them in a box kinda like a singles club. they meet, and tell stories about their lost companions over coffee. since no dryer ever gets used, it’s got to be the laundry basket, the washing machine, or the boogie man who lives under my bed. I’m pretty sure it’s him. The socks don’t even make it past my floor. He’s got them all working slave labour for him. u know all that dust under ur bed, that’s a dead, decomposed sock that was abused to death… im not in any way dismissing the portal thing tho. that’s how the slave trade happens between other boogie men, and perhaps even other peoples dryers… or am i just way off here?
Hey, wump. I think your theory is a pretty good one, but I still like the idea of millions of single socks plotting revenge against us. Wouldn’t that make a good movie?
LOL i can see it now, the final scene, socks holding butter knives and using tupperware lids as shields coming after all of the dryers that tore them from their famillys. They tear through homes ravaging the measly humans trying to protect their drying appliances. throw in somthing about the boogie man and you’ve got urself one awsome movie
NO, its not the dryers they’re mad at, it’s us. I mean, look at it. If someone wrapped you around their foot and walked on you all day, i think you’d be pissed. So they ran away through the dryer and are now plotting their revenge on the human race for treating them so badly. Meanwhile, the boogie man is helping them, u know, providing supplies, recruiting new socks. I call it, “When Socks Attack!!!”, or “When Good Socks Go Bad”. By the way, I also always wanted to do a movie called “When Security Guards Attack” which would mainly be me getting the crap beat out of me for shoplifting. But, that’s beside the subject.
