Why is it that sock, out of all the garments we wear on a normal basis, have the greatest tendency to spontaneously disappear after every laundry cycle? Whether they're dissolving in the washer or evaporating in the dryer, it seems like every time I do a load of laundry my sock numbers are depleted by a small amount.

If you take a look through all my clothes, you'll find pairs of pants, boxers, undershirts, and t-shirts that I've been wearing for over a year. If you look through my sock drawer, or the magical void that should contain socks, you'd be hard pressed to find a single pair or stray sock that was older than a few months.

This is because I'm constantly forced to buy new packages every few months. Not because my socks are ruined or walling apart. I would be happy to replace my socks if it were simply to swap them fro a better pair. However, I'm constantly replacing them because they keep disappearing on me.

Just a few months ago I switched from wearing your normal white cotton socks to a nice black dress sock. I went out to Mervyn's and purchased 4 bags of these socks, each one containing 6 pairs of socks. At the time I thought, "this should be enough to last me almost three and a half weeks between washes". Well, here I am only a few months later and I magically have 5 pair left, which can't even last me one week.

I can't for the life of me figure out where the socks are going to. I don't do my laundry with anyone else's clothes, so they can't be mixed in with their stuff. I personally move all my laundry into the washer, then to the dryer, and then back to my room, so they can't be being misplaced by anyone else during transit. I just don't get it. It's almost as if they're getting up and walking out of my room during the night. I don't know what it is, but I'm getting tired of it. I think I need to go shopping again.

posted by Christopher Schnese