So, there I was taking off my shoe when what to my wondering eyes did appear but a big, bald toe poking through a hole in my olive green sock.
A HOLE … in my SOCK. Me!
It looked like General Patton staring back at me, and I could have sworn it barked out, “Boy, don’t just stand there. Get me a ham sandwich.”
I was horrified. Humiliated. Totally embarrassed, even though I was the only one there to see it. “Quick,” I said to myself. “Throw them away before someone looks in the window and sees. What would the neighbor’s think?
Oh, the shame. Me? A hole in my sock? What’s next? A hobo hat, three-day-old stubble and a bottle of cheap, cough syrup-flavored wine in a paper bag? The humiliation.
What’s happened to me? I didn’t used to be like this. I didn’t used to wear clothes that were so … well … ventilated. That’s a fancy way of putting it. I used to be a sharp dresser, adorned in the fineries of fashion. I was a handsome young man. Dare I say dapper? My clothes were not only nice, but the stitches were also holding together. I never had to worry about the threads giving out at the supermarket while I was checking the sodium on a can of chicken broth.
“Mommy, why is there a naked man over there reading soup?”
How did I become such … I’ll say it … a slob? A poor slob … with holes in his socks.
And not to blame my daughter but … I blame my daughter! I think she’s the root cause. It wasn’t like this before her. I had nice things. I never had to go through my shirt closet and ask myself questions like this: “So, do I want the white shirt with the ketchup stain or the blue striped shirt with the olive oil splotch shaped like roadkill pigeon?” Or the pants with the cuffs that are so worn on the bottoms they look like shag carpeting.
It’s like being a kid all over again, especially with the hole in the socks. That was something that always happened to you as a little kid. I remember one time a toe worked its way through a hole while I was at school. I couldn’t figure out why I had this strange pain in my shoe. After a while it turned into a dull throbbing before it went completely numb. In PE or between classes I must have decided to take my shoe off and what I found was the most awful site: my baby toe had turned the color (and size!) of an eggplant. It was being strangled to death by a hole in my sock.
“Help me!” it wheezed. “I can’t breathe.”
If you had it real bad, you went home at the end of the day and your sock had opened up at the seam letting all your toes poke through. It resembled an exploding burrito.
But I’m not a kid anymore. This shouldn’t be happening. My daughter doesn’t have holes in HER socks. She has nice socks. Socks with butterflies and candy-colored stripes. They’re also all perfectly white, even though she sweats dirt and walks around in them like they’re boots.
All of her clothes are nice. Real nice. But I guess when you’re a parent your own wardrobe plays second fiddle to your kid. And I don’t mind so much. These are the choices we make, and the priorities we set.
But the sock experience has me thinking it’s time to splurge a little on daddy, too. Time to raise my standards and bring me back closer to the way it used to be. Time to make sure I never look like a hobo, not to mention that I don’t strangle any more toes.