One of Life's Great Mysteries

As a kid I loved to read.  Actually, I still love to read.  My taste in books has changed some.  As a kid, I loved crime novels and mysteries.  I loved Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and most especially Sherlock Holmes.  I loved reading and trying to solve the mysteries along with the characters.  As an adult, I still love mysteries, but I have moved into solving real-life drama.

One question I always have is what is the purpose of poison ivy and mosquitoes?  An even greater unsolved mystery in my life is underwear and socks.

Let's start with underwear.  Can anyone explain to me where it goes?  Generally when I babysit if an article of clothing gets dirty or if the kids arrive in pajamas, I throw their clothes in my wash.  Pook's wife has asked multiple times where their daughter's underwear has gone.  She started out with packs of them and is down to a few.  I am absolutely clueless!  I have checked the clothing piles of the other kids, and her underwear is NOT mixed in with theirs.  I am clueless.

The other issue with underwear is how it gets to be in certain places.  I know the kids have underwear on when they are at my house.  I will be straightening up the house and low and behold there is underwear hidden behind a door or under a bed or in a toy box.  When I ask how it got there . . . no one knows.  I know who is wearing what character of underwear each day and I can ask that person and that child has no idea how their underwear got behind the door.  Weirder yet, I check them and they have underwear on.  It's a mystery all right.  I would think that underwear is one of those things that you always know where yours is.  I know I do!

Socks are a different story.  Socks can end up just about anywhere.  The kids generally arrive with socks on, but in the course of playing they get removed and tossed to the side or picked up with the toys.  I get that.  What I do not get is how each week as the laundry gets done I end up with a pile of ten or twelve socks without matches.  Now, some of the kids are committed to never wearing matching socks so when I wash them I never have matching socks.  That accounts for a few pairs, but I still have ten or twelve every week that I send home with moms to find the mate.  Most of them come back to me with a daughter saying, I don't have the mate to this or it isn't our sock.  So, where do they go?  I know I lose forks and spoons to the garbage, but socks too?

And, what do you do with a lonely sock?  Adult socks can become dust rags and window washing cloths or even puppets.  A child's sock just doesn't have enough gumption to make it anything other than a lonely sock. 

Perhaps the sock industry has built something into these clothing items that makes them disintegrate under certain conditions so that parents are forced to continue to buy socks in bulk quantities!  There's a conspiracy theory for you!  Perhaps the washer and dryer industry is in cahoots with the sock industry and the socks are disintegrating in one or the other machine forcing parents to buy more socks.  Whatever the truth is, I have plenty of lonely socks to share.  

My husband came up with his own solution to socks before Nike thought to put an R and an L on their socks.  He got himself and marker and puts symbols on each pair of socks.  I have to admit, at the very least we are able to track his socks.  I think a better plan is to install a microchip in the socks as a locator.  

Oh well.  I guess we may never know the answers to all of life's mysteries, but it sure keeps  my brain going.  I hope you have a blessed week and are enjoying the beginning of summer!