Socks

Socks are apparently the most intelligent form of life in the universe (I’ve always wondered why it was assumed there was just one verse, haven’t you?) for a number of reasons. It’s pretty cool, because they know that we don’t even think of them as a lifeform.

The reason for this assertion is the whole disappearance thing. You know, the way socks go into dryers in pairs and only one comes out? A friend of mine believes the theory put forward by Douglas Adams (Rest his soul and fly a towel at half-mast for 42 days) that surmises socks put into dryers sometimes pass through the portal to another universe (there goes that idea) and are replaced in this universe by a wire coathanger in your wardrobe (a simple matter of conservation of mass between one universe and another) , which neatly explains why there are so damned many of them in every wardrobe. They even turn up in hotel room wardrobes, despite the coathangers there being the sort that don’t have a hook on them so you won’t steal them when you’re flogging the bathrobes.

Travelling through space-time in this fashion is something we have yet to master, despite our supposed cleverness. If we could just jump into a clothes dryer and emerge in another universe or another part of this universe (this one is pretty big, by all accounts) then we’d all be doing it, for the purposes of tourism, of course. The fact that socks are merely space tourists has never really occurred to anyone whom I know personally, but it should come as no surprise that clothes dryer ownership is on a rapid growth curve worldwide, at the same time that socks are disappearing in greater numbers than ever before and wire coathangers are appearing so quickly that the unknowing believe they are breeding in dark places. You see, it makes a strange sort of sense if you squint just right.

There is, however, another possibility that has not been adequately canvassed: Upright washing machines.

Down through history, we have been washing our clothes in small pools, about 60cm in diameter. This has always been a relatively safe practice, so long as one is accompanied whilst doing it. There is a darker side to it though, that is little understood. You see, washing machines are also portals or wormholes into other far distant galaxies and parallel universes. Unaccompanied use is a different matter. Millions of men and women, mostly women in this case, go missing each year when they witness a sock activating the portal and become suspicious. The socks simply take care of the witness in the way any “made man” mobster would… they grab the woman and drag her through the portal with them, thus ensuring their secret remains safe.

Someone figured this out a while back and has made a small mountain of money out of the Stargate franchise. The shimmery surface of a stargate is really just the surface of the water in a washing machine, though larger. If you have the operator’s manual committed to memory and the right codes, you too can use waching machines for intergalactic travel. You don’t have to even deal with those large, swarthy critters with the plastic toys from cereal packets implanted under the skin of their foreheads, either.

If they scare you now, there’s really no compelling reason to have a dryer or a washing machine. Front-loading washing machines seem to be OK, at least until they reach a diameter of 4 metres or more. Fortunately, such big front-loading washing machines are rare, though some have obviously found their way into the hands of the props department on the Stargate set.

I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky;
I left my shoes and socks there – I wonder if they’re dry?

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