Socks

            I dreamed of socks. Piles and piles of unmatched socks. They were all the same brand and style, but had been washed a different number of times, so the blackness of each pair was different. They had been all dumped in the center of a bed, not mine. I was trying to match up the socks by their fade levels. Just to make things more interesting, the light was failing, and the sun had gone down. I kept trying to tell someone that this really wasn't that important, or if it was, couldn't we just dye them all black again? No one was there to answer, and for some reason I was powerless to stop doing what I was doing. I couldn't even intentionally mismatch the socks and put them on the pile. I tried, but then I would pick up the mismatched pair and fling them apart, back into the unsorted pile. I asked myself, "What happens when I find a sock that doesn't match anything because it was washed separately from its mate? What then? Do I have to go and wash a sock until it matches? Do we throw them away? What is the deal with all the mis-matched socks anyway? How come there isn't anyone here to help me with this? Where's everybody. How come the cats aren't here to help. Why is the matching of socks so important? Who keeps dumping more unmatched clean socks on the bed. Don't we have enough socks? I could wear a clean pair every day for months without having to wash another sock! Hey, you guys! I thought I saw something go by outside the window. I'm not leaving here until all of these socks are sorted. At least they're not stinking socks. The last load that was dumped wasn't completely dry yet.

            That dream, though it had no particularly frightening content, kept me awake for about two hours, obsessing about it, trying to figure out what my demented brain was telling me.

            I just checked my socks. Both are black, but they don't match, as one has obviously been washed in hot water, or far more often than the other. In the past I wouldn't have even noticed, but now I am finding it slightly disturbing. (Not so disturbing that I want to go out and buy new socks, or go home and change, but still.)

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF