Socks in our house are a bit of an odd item of apparel. I’m the only one who can stand to wear them indoors—and I have to wear them. My husband, I think, believes they’re evil and does his best to destroy them with alarming alacrity. And our daughter… well, she has her own rituals.
Admittedly, some of that is my doing.
She used to come into the house and immediately strip off her shoes and socks. And I don’t mean she moved to a convenient spot and carefully placed them somewhere sensible—I mean the moment she crossed the threshold, it was like she lost the ability to walk until her feet were unencumbered. She’d become an instant trip hazard to anyone following her (because obviously, she had to be first in), and you couldn’t move her without triggering a full-blown meltdown.
If—by some miracle—you did manage to get her to budge, she’d leave a trail of destruction/trip hazards down the corridor and possibly up the staircase until her task was completed. So, in an effort to avoid broken legs and to be able to enter my home in a reasonably efficient manner, I got a box in which all socks could be put.
This box has three drawers:
One for everyday socks One for wellie socks One for dirty socks to be returned
I thought I’d covered all the bases—until I was informed that school socks and day socks are, in fact, different things.
Sigh.
So we negotiated: school socks can (and do) live with her school uniform (hooray), but are returned—on arrival—to the dirty sock drawer. (No idea if there’s logic here, but whatever. At least they’re not on the floor.)
Day socks are put on if:
You go out again after returning home from school It’s a weekend or holiday You change at the gym
If Mummy forgets your day socks and you have to wear school socks into gym class, you are—apparently—entitled to have a full-blown hissy fit and refuse to wear any socks for that session.
Finally: day socks must not, under ANY circumstances, be worn as pairs.
They must be odd.
I don’t care anymore—I just buy the sodding things in sets and let her mix and match.
School socks, however, must be in pairs. But, thankfully, one white sock is much like another, so if you buy ten identical ones and the washer/dryer eats five, you still have enough to get by.
I have just run the washing machine purely to clean all her sodding socks. She doesn’t even like the things but somehow owns more than royalty—and I still don’t know where they go, because she never has enough.
I’m assuming we have a sock-eating monster living in the appliances, devouring the left one of every set. I can’t be sure, however, because—since she never wears matching pairs—who knows what even goes into the machine in the first place?
On the plus side: I never have to throw away a pair just because one has a hole in it.
So now, all I need to do is train her to put her shoes in the rack.
How hard can that be?
Raising the Modern Fae 