"Sock" It to Me: The Agony of de Feet

You wouldn’t know it right now, but as I write this, moisture is being wicked away from my feet, presumably to be distributed either into my shoes, or in a perfect world, a moisture-deficient atmosphere. You see, I have new socks.

I recently purchased a package of three pairs of black socks for work. My workplace doesn’t require black socks, but I am required to wear black pants and black shoes, and I don’t have any desire to look like a Michael Jackson impersonator during a flood event, so I got the black ones.

Before I move on, I need to get one important piece of information off my chest.

I love new socks. I love the feeling of them on my feet. Some people love the feeling of mud squishing beneath and between their toes, some like the feel of soft grass under their feet, some love the feeling of warm seawater splashing over their feet while they stand on hot sand on the beach.

To me they’re all crazy. I can’t stand being barefoot, especially outside. I have giant feet, and they don’t like stepping on foreign objects. Outside is full of foreign objects.

I guess I’m an inside boy. Probably always have been, probably always will be. One summer, my father brought home a pile of old used pallets and thought it would do me some good to spend time outside, breaking them all down and building something with them. I built a club house with my friends so I could be inside when I was forced to go outside. (We attached giant slingshots to the roof, but that’s a story for another time after I make sure all the statutes of limitation have expired.)

Anyway, I’m an inside boy, and I love to have my feet covered. For most of my adult life (read: previous marriage) our house had a “shoes off” rule, so I walked around in stocking feet a lot. And the only feeling better than having socks between my feet and those objects that would seek to do me harm is having new socks between my feet and those objects that would seek to do me harm.

New socks are soft and comfortable. “New-sock-feel” is akin to that “new-car-smell.” It gives you a sense of freedom and well-being (and, unlike chemicals sprayed into new cars, "new-sock-feel" is probably less likely to give you some ridiculous new form of cancer.) Walking around in new socks is like a love letter from my brain to my feet.

Why, you may ask then, do you not just wear new socks, and then discard them after a single use?

Three reasons:

1) Every sock a wanted sock, I always say.

2) New socks actually feel good for about the first week or so.

3) Socks are freaking expensive!

What makes this new batch of socks so surreally wonderful is that they were ostensibly free!

All it took was to actually read the junk mail that clutters my mailbox, and then hold on to a coupon for the requisite week. That’s it!

In this case, I had received a coupon for "Ten dollars off a purchase of ten dollars or more."

At the end of this time, I was able to waltz…well…walk into the store that had sent me the coupon and voila I had three pairs of black socks, valued at ten dollars. BOOOM!

The following day, I broke into the new package of socks. After snapping off all those nasty plastic tabs that are woven through the socks so you don’t steal a single stocking from the store (and doing it without actually damaging any socks, a feat unto itself,) I slipped my feet into a pair of poly-nylo-cotton heaven.

I prepared to discard the cardboard packaging when I noticed that my socks had “features.”

Socks have…features?

I thought socks were these things that you put on your feet to keep them warm…and let’s face it, to make your feet feel like they’re in…heaven!

Specifically, the socks have “moisture-wicking” capabilities, which (so far as I understand the whole moisture-wicking technology) remove moisture from my feet, keeping them dry and comfortable. Now, to your average, moist-footed citizen, this would seem like a good thing.

However, I started wondering. And boy, did I wonder.

Are my feet going to come out completely desiccated, cracked and dry?

How do the socks know which direction to wick the moisture? Do they wick moisture exclusively from my feet, to be distributed into my shoes (or the moisture-deprived atmosphere)?

What’s stopping them from subsequently wicking the moisture back from my shoes and into my feet?

Could you prevent mold and mildew in the house by tossing socks randomly into the corners of various rooms?

And for heaven’s sake, what happens if I wash them?

When I open the washer, will I have a load of clothes that are still dry, with two over-saturated socks, filled to their stocking capacity with all the water that had been intended to wash the load?

So, despite the heavenly feeling, I pulled the socks on with a degree of trepidation. At the end of my first workday, I was pleased to note that my feet were not desiccated, and they were—for the most part—dry. In fact, I’ve worn all three pairs now, and they have performed (as much as a sock can perform) wonderfully.

And to date, they have not yet sucked all the water out of the washer…