So.

Since school has started in August, I have bought (boughten?) my son three ten packs of socks and my daughter two eight packs of socks. That’s a grand total of 46 socks. Knowing that he has been in kindergarten for over one hundred days (as I just sent one hundred jellybeans to school to celebrate) and using a complex geometry formula, I can figure out that five months later we would have four boys socks (only two of which, technically, match) and seven girls socks (none of which match).

I have a photograph of the (lucky?) survivors. 

I no longer make more than a minimal attempt to match socks.  At this point, a superb match is both are the same colorish.  An acceptable match is both are, in fact, sock shaped.

But, my gosh, where do the others go?

I looked in my back seat, in their toy bin, behind the washer and dryer, under the couch cushions, in the dog’s crate, in my purse, behind my refrigerator, under their bed, in the backyard, and in the cat tree. (All of which, are indeed, places where at one time I did discover a sock or some lone piece of abandoned clothing).

I locate, on my best days, one or two of the squirrelly things.

Are they committing sock suicide because they don’t want to traipse through any more muddy playgrounds sans shoes?

If I were richer, I could have a special room just for mismatched socks, empty dreams, and broken promises.  (Sadly, the socks would probably take over and crowd everything else out).

In hand-me-down boxes of children’s clothes we have received,  we have found lone escapees.  These are easier to throw out because if they aren’t somewhere in the box, we will never match them.

But, the survivors from my own house…there is always the smallest spark of hope that somehow, someday they will be reunited, like the lovers on a beach scene in a movie who run gleefully into each other’s arms.  Until then, my darlings,  you will just have to sit solo with your compatriots on my dryer and pray that someday it will be you.