Old Socks

One recent weekend morning, I was struck by an unnerving, yet eerily accurate thought. I've got old socks.

Back when I was a teen, I was always running out of socks. So much so, I tended to 'reuse' socks more often that I should have (but that's a story for another day).

Once, during a significant sock shortage, I remember heading towards my dad's sock drawer in the hope that some of my socks had ended up with his, by mistake. Sadly, the first glance at his sock drawer quickly dashed my hopes. All of my socks were white, all of my dad's socks were black or navy blue.

Now, it didn't really occur to me as a teen, but the aforementioned thought went along these lines - the older you get, the less 'young socks' you have.

See, socks fall into two ages - Young socks used to be generally thick, white crew (polyester or cotton) and sports-ish related with some kind of logo embossed at the side. Old socks were more work related (black, brown or navy), more specific to needs (wool, padded soles) and seldom indicative of brands unless the brand was really worth showing.

So as you may have guessed, approximately 15% of my current sock inventory consists of young socks and even then, 33% of those consist of dark-coloured sports socks. I expect that by the time I'm old and infirmed, the young sock to old sock ratio will be a fraction of a fraction.

(At the risk of spinning off another story, some of my young socks didn't even start out as mine to begin with! But lets leave it at that and focus on my coming to terms with my general aging.)

(image swiped from here)