Erin's Journals

Monday, May 10, 2021

Just a thought… I’m absolutely convinced the missing socks turn into extra Tupperware lids. [author – clearly a genius – unknown]

As always, you can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

Welcome to a new week and I hope that your weekend was a gentle one – especially if Mother’s Day carries a weight for you that not everyone knows or understands. And on we go.

Do you know what yesterday also was, though? I bet you don’t. It was Lost Sock Memorial Day. Yes, I know there are a lot more important things than missing socks, but bear with me. I have both what I hope is an analogy and a laugh. First, to the philosophy of it all.

You see, this Lost Sock Memorial Day (and please don’t ask me who came up with it – maybe it was Hanes or something) is paired, if you will, with the notion that we are just to give up on the missing sock and let its partner go. Stop collecting that one sad sock in hopes that somewhere there’s another just like it, hanging in and waiting to be found.

And is that a lesson in life, or what? We hold on, just thinking that it’s going to turn up. We know full well that the dryer has consumed it. After all, an appliance of that power and size and might demands sacrifices – lest it start spewing lint lava and villages are destroyed. It could happen. Let it have the darned sock. Then pull up your other ones, and move on.

It’s healthy to just let it go. It’s a sock. And socks are indeed important, and some are expensive, but unless you’re saving it for a puppet or to clean with, you just have to know when the Dryer Gods have won, brush yourself off (preferably with one of those sticky roller thingies) and move on. Let that surviving sock go the way of the earring, the favourite nail file, the pens. For me, it’s always the pens.

I do have to tell you, though, that I won a victory over the Dryer Gods just last week. I was getting my biannual mammogram and as I stood in the little change room and took off my hoodie, what should fall out of my pocket and tumble to the floor, but one of our grandson Colin’s socks! Obviously, the scared sock had sought refuge in my pocket, lest it, too, be sucked into the maw of the angry appliance, never to be seen again.

And it was not just any sock, either; oh, no. Because the Dryer Gods have a sense of humour (a dry one, naturally), it was this one, adorned with none other than pancakes. Exactly what my boobs were going to feel like in a matter of minutes.

All hail the Dryer Gods: you got me! You win this round (and around and around) but since you managed to make me laugh with your impeccable timing – and timer – before I got the girls squished, then I think perhaps I won, too.

Today, I’m excited for another reason: I’m rolling up my sleeve to get my first vaccine – the literal shot in the arm I needed this week.

Thanks for coming by and I’ll be back with you this Thursday.

Rob WhiteheadMonday, May 10, 2021