Maybe this has been asked before, but I did not find it in a search, so forgive me if it has been asked before.
Where does the other sock go when the dryer is done?
While I’m at it, where do all of the missing pens and lighters go?
I don’t know where those danged socks get off to, but I did read a theory about all those missing paper clips: the paper clip is the first stage of development of the wire clothes hanger! That’s why you have so few paper clips and so many clothes hangers. Many folks have tried to discover, in vain, if there is an intermediate stage that we don’t yet know about. Hey, now that I think about it, maybe this unknown stage rounds up those socks and uses them to wrap into a cocoon-like shelter. Whoa! We might be on to something here! Call the X-Files guys!
Where the socks and lighters go is a mystery, but the highly esteemed HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had the good oil on the pens.
All the lost pens and writing implements mad their way to the planet of the lost biros, where they spent their retirement in a tyical biroid fashion. It was rumoured that Zaphod Beeblebrox’s hugely successful second-hand biro business tapped into this rich source of supply. 
I must live in a reversed world: lost socks end up here at my house [many in colors I have never seen before], but clothes hangers are always disappearing. Another explanation is that I live with three preteens who are always scrounging around for materials to use in their experiments, abstract art or construction projects and they are starting to load/wash clothes, mixing colors, using the hot water cycle, bleach etc… I would like to know why their conversational skills plummet to “dunno”, “forgot” and “whatever”.
Socks fall over the rim of the washing machine into the back of the machine. If you visit a laundromat & ask the person there, they often have a huge box of extra socks.
Questions like this are usually answered in books by d. feldman.
heh. I answered this question in my very first post, many many months ago.
Anyway, my theory is this: people always blame the dryer for “eating” the lost sock. My theory: the dryers are being framed by the washers, the REAL culprits in worldwide sock thievery. Have you ever counted your socks after the washer but before the dryer? Me neither. Clearly, investigation needs to be done.
Actually it’s my fault. I moved all the other socks to MPSIMS. My bad.
Socks? Pens? Feh. Can any guitarists agree with me that guitar picks must automatically self-obliterate after a certain period of time?
I seem to “run out” of them every so often, but I have no idea where they end up.
Dr. J
Quoth radar ralf:
It’s from a short story called “Or all the Sea with Oysters”, (don’t recall the author) which can be found in The Hugo Winners, edited by Asimov. Clothes hangers are actually the intermediate form; the adulta are those bicycles that the police are always finding and auctioning off when nobody claims them.
Back to the OP: I agree that dryers are getting a bad rap, but so are washers: it’s people who are to blame. Scenario: A person collecting the laundry misses one sock under the bed or whatever. When that person then folds the clothes, they find a mismatched sock, and conclude that one of the laundry machines ate it. They check washer and drier and don’t find it, so they conclude that it’s gone forever, and throw out the odd sock. The next week, they find that sock under the bed, but they’ve already thrown out its mate, so it turns up odd, too, with the same result. I think that if you save the odd socks in the drawer, you’ll find that they all turn up sooner or later-- it’s always worked for my family.
The socks develop black holes, and collapse into another universe. 
I prefer to blame it on the cat…he always seems a little guilty about some thing…
why else would he get up and bolt out of the room for no apparent reason? Guilt and panic attacks can do can do a lot for your adrenaline.
He’s always “sleeping” in the laundry room. I think he’s waiting for the dryer to open so he can snatch the unsuspecting article of clothing.
Has anybody seen my keys?
**You asked the question wrong.
Since pens and lighters ACCUMULATE,
Socks ACCUMULATE, too.
The extra socks are irregulars, handed out by Hanes to Washermats.
Washermat guys put one in each empty dryer so people will come back to the same place to ask about the mate.
Hanes in return gets all the lint to make new socks.