[Note to mods: I was going to put this thread in FQ, but decided there would probably be no definitive answer, and decided to put it here. If that was wrong I apologize.]
I know this sounds nuts, but without exception, whenever I notice a sock has worn through at the heel, I’m wearing it on my right foot. Not once has it ever been on my left foot.
Yet, AFAIK socks are left-and-right fungible as it were, unlike shoes. Whenever I put on my socks, either sock must be going on either foot, completely randomly. Due to the kind of socks I wear (all the same brand, style, and color), and the way I store the clean ones in my sock drawer (not balled up by twos, but just laid flat, individually), whenever I need another pair of socks I just randomly grab two individual socks out of the drawer. Each of the two socks I have on at this moment might have been paired with a different sock, the last time I wore them. Or if I did wear them together, they could just as easily have been on the opposite feet. It’s possible I follow some unconscious habit when putting on socks, e.g. always right foot first, but given the randomness of how I pick out socks to wear, that can’t be the explanation.
Generally, I wear socks all the time in the house, which I’ve heard can accelerate their wearing out. But that doesn’t explain why any given sock is on the right foot when I notice it. Even if there’s a physical difference between my two feet which would cause my right sock to wear through faster, over its lifetime each sock gets worn about the same amount of time on either foot.
Has anyone else ever noticed anything like this with socks?
You explained pretty thoroughly why your socks should be getting more or less even wear, and there’s no reason that they should always be on the right foot whenever a hole develops.
However, by using the phrasing “why do I notice”, this opens up the door to cognitive bias (probably confirmation bias). At one point you noticed a hole in a sock you were wearing on your right foot. If it’s a random occurrence, future events wouldn’t be equally distributed… it might happen 3 times in a row. Now it seems like there’s something weird going on, so you’re always on the lookout for something on the right foot, and you don’t remember noticing when it’s happened on the left foot.
How many observations have you actually made? If you toss a coin 5 times, there’s a 1/8 chance it could come up all heads or all tails. Same with socks. Maybe you’re on a lucky streak and it’s messing with your mind.
Or, he may notice as soon as a hole develops. And if he spends more time resting his right heel on the ground, perhaps when seated, it may get more wear, so the moment of breakthrough may usually be on the right foot.
I have noticed that I get a lot of callus on the left foot, over that bone bump on the outside where the log meets the foot, than I do on the right foot. It’s because I cross my legs one way a lot more often than the other way.
Yeah, my right heel is more calloused than my left. It could also be a seam in your shoe that is sharp, not noticeable to you the way your foot fits in the shoe, but could be snagging a sock.
Most people, if you look at the wear patterns on the bottoms of their shoes, don’t have mirror-image patterns there. I certainly don’t. They are both legs, but they have their own separate architectural oddities, from hip to toe. Thats’s more than sufficient to eat socks more pervasively on one foot than on the other.
I’ve been getting holes in my sock heels very frequently since we moved into a new house and implemented a no shoes inside policy. More often than not it’s the right foot. Paying close attention, I find I simply put more weight on it. Because I’m leaning on my right foot while standing, any turns to move will pivot on my right heel.
I really should get some house slippers out something.
I’d be willing to bet you’ve worn plenty of holy socks on your left foot. You’ve just never noticed.
When I put socks on, each gets put on differently. On my left, the foot stays on the ground as I put it on. My right foot gets lifted and rests on my left knee as I put it on. Doing it this way means I get a better view of my right foot than I do my left.
So I too tend to only notice holes in my right sock.
We both made an error. All heads would be 1/32, all tails would be 1/32, so all heads or tails would be 1/16. Mea culpa et youa culpa. The point I’m making is that pure chance is not unlikely in this scenario.
OP mentioned that the left and right socks are interchangeable, so even if one foot causes more wear (extremely likely), that foot shouldn’t always be wearing the same sock.
Which makes me think of another possibility: that assumption is false. The sock does in fact have some apparent “handedness”. Perhaps it’s a subtle manufacturing difference, or some shape that the socks acquire with increasing wear. Whatever the cause, he’s unconsciously noticing it and following a preference.
And if you’re like me, you don’t rotate every pair of socks evenly. You wear a pair, wash it in the day’s laundry, and it goes right back on top of the stack. That wouldn’t affect handedness, but it accelerates wear that might drive an unconscious preference.
If the right side wears socks at a significantly higher rate then the left, chances are you are going to find the holes on the right. To put this in an extreme, let’s say the left doesn’t wear the socks at all, thus all hole will be on the right.
Something else I just recalled: Most of my holes occur when pulling my sock on or off, because the tugging force is too much for the weakened heel fabric. Out of habit, I always do my right sock first. And I’m right-handed, so I’m probably using more force on the right side.
So I think that most of the rips I noticed actually happened that same day, and it’s probably because I use too much force handling them that day, and I always use more force on the right side. If those assumptions are all true, then it would make sense that I usually notice holes on the right side, because that’s where I’m making them.
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