May 3, 2008 @ 1:54 pm | Filed under: Uniquely Me

There is something very mysterious going on in our house. In our laundry room, to be exact.

One by one, my husband’s socks are doing a great disappearing act!

It’s weird.

My running socks are content to stay in pairs and are always present and accounted for. But Mike’s socks…they obviously are taking great issue with him and are going to great lengths to be freed from this house!

Seriously though – where is it exactly that socks go?

Is there a secret backdoor to the washing machine that is only known to sock-kind?

After a couple of months of hanging onto mismatched socks, most people will simply give up and find some other use for them.

Crafty type people will turn orphans into sock monkeys or sock puppets.

Non-crafty types use them to dust or wax the car.

Still others donate their mismatched socks to the Goodwill, reasoning that a poor person doesn’t mind wearing mismatched socks rather than no socks at all. (News flash: poor people also have drawers of their own mismatched socks they are trying to get rid of.)

And then, there’s the people like myself, who are eternally optimistic that eventually the missing socks will show up and can be reunited with their mates.

I’ve been doing a bit of research on the missing sock phenomenon. There’s plenty of theories floating around the internet about aliens, black holes, and time travel; a few people even suggested that leprechauns or the sand man sneaks into laundry rooms everywhere late at night to steal unsuspecting socks.

While these theories are humorous and rather entertaining, I wanted the real reason why my socks turn up missing on laundry day.

Socks really don’t vanish into thin air, you know. They merely go somewhere else. That somewhere else is one of two places, neither which is a black hole or another planet.

Evidently many of them are simply in hiding. According to Internet reports, if you take the time to pry up the agitator, you’ll be likely to find up to 20 missing socks. Twenty socks, folks! They allegedly weave themselves around the rod, resembling something like a kindergarten art project.

I’ve added Remove washing machine agitator to my to-do list. For those of you who may need further instructions, here you go:

To remove the agitator of your machine, simply pry up the agitator cap, unscrew the nut and bolt, and gently tug straight up. It’s that simple.

The second place missing socks tend to go is really quite logical, when you think about it.

Socks are staticky little buggers. They stick to other clothing like glue, especially when run through the dryer. Socks can disappear up the sleeves of tee shirts, in pant legs, or in the fitted corners of your sheets. They also attach themselves to velcro strips and towels. When they disappear in another article of clothing, especially something that doesn’t get worn that often, it could be months before you discover the missing sock.

So the next time you’re standing in line at the store, or are sitting in your pew at church, and you feel that little tell-tale soft lump of…something…

It’s enough to almost make you wish it truly were night stalkers that were making off with your socks!