"if it's good news, it must be someone else's"

Monday, November 22, 2010

runaway sock

i spotted a runaway sock on the side of the road today, crushed beyond recognition.
flat as a pancake—dead as a door nail.
from what little i could determine, it appeared to be yellow, possibly with red stripes running about its top.

i wondered if its partner, probably sequestered to and imprisoned in the single sock drawer for some time now, worried if its lover's brave break for freedom ever succeeded, and what it must be like on the outside.
free of pampering smelly, sweaty, crusty feet?
free of the weekly chemicals applied while packed in a chamber with the likes of underpants and g-strings, and alternately doused and drowned in cold and hot water?
free of the endless, dizzying, tumbling torture in crowded heat drums?
would its sole mate return soon, as in parting promise, to rescue it away to the found promised land, where the soiled, stodgy confines of shoes, sneakers and work boots would become nothing more than melted memories?

or possibly, after days in isolation with only the broken thoughts of other singles to go by, has it been fretting its own fate: a shoe buffer perhaps, a hand puppet possibly, a golf club cover most likely.
all outcomes worse than the humble existence it had while in the pedestrian bliss of pairdom.

then i thought, this is why i'm so much better off dreaming rather than doing, because doing always seems to get so messy. dreams? just change the endings.

oh well.
alas poor sock, may you rest now, knowing that your journey, so ever short, so ever final, will forever be comforting—and with any luck nature fresh.

3 comments:

Randy Johnson said...

Read this aloud (to rounds of applause) to my sock drawer this morning. In hindsight that may have been a bad idea. I saw one hanging halfway out the last time I walked by the dresser.

Robert Crane said...

for one, that's exactly why i don't talk to them, other than small talk. you know, how's the weather? been to the corn fields lately? stuff to keep them cheery because those singles are a tightly wound bunch.

for two, they're just socks and other than creating a little kinetic energy every now and again, they're kinda lame. of course, you never heard me say that.

Pam said...

How ironic! I just cleaned out my sock drawer this morning and found an old Kodak instamatic camera with it's own pop-up flash cube, hiding beneath the various types of socks I own.

As far as the sock you found in the road, Bobby; it's probably the one I lost with the jelly beans in it the last time I was in New Jersey.