May 9 recognizes a fun and unique holiday, National Lost Sock Memorial Day. It is time to say “good-bye” to all of the single socks, the ones where their mates have been lost to the unknown. Where do all the missing socks go? Is there a washing machine heaven? This is a question that people have been trying to solve for many centuries. An answer may never be found to this problem, and life will go on. How sad to have lost such a close-knit friend!
Of course, since before the dawn of Tupperware inventors have attempted the prevention of such separation anxiety. Alas, if they had succeeded mismatched socks wouldn’t be popular today. And, we there wouldn’t be National Lost Sock Memorial Day.
Lost socks have haunted man since the dawn of time, or at least since the Stone Ages, when the practice of wearing socks began. People back then most likely used animal skins to cover their stinky dogs.
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By David Jackson, CC BY-SA 2.0 uk, Specially designed sandal socks were found in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt. These very odd socks were made between A.D. 250 and A.D. 420. There’s a compartment for the big toe and another for the rest.
- The process used to make these red socks is called nålbindning, or single-needle knitting. This time-consuming process required only a single thread.
- These toe curlers are on display in the Victoria and Albert museum in the United Kingdom.
- Perhaps the biggest wonder of these socks is that after 1,600 years, they are still a matching pair!
- Washingtonians searched for “sandals and socks” on Google more often than residents of any other state.
- We Tell the World About Our Lost Socks: Head over to Twitter and key search “lost socks” or go to YouTube and do the same thing or Instagram or Google, probably SnapChat too, and you’ll start to understand how strange, miserable, and sharing a culture we became when one of our single socks vanishes into thin air or gets eaten by those damn sock monsters.
Lost socks are a part of pop culture, here are four videos about “lost socks”
1. The Cemetery Of Lost Socks – Personal Belongings, video posted to YouTube by cinamon20.
2. The Department of Lost Socks, posted to YouTube by George Safonov
3. Jack Nicholson’s speech about American men’s strange penchant for losing 400 million socks every year in the movie Heartburn. Posted to YouTube by Movieclips
And finally, this video showing the sock thieves in action.
4. The Truth Behind Your Missing Socks. Posted to YouTube by Sockmonzters
Sources:
YouTube – see videos above
