18-Pack: Circus NY by Sam Edelman Crew Socks
Our Take
- For feet
- Can also be worn on hands
- (Hand-wearing not advisable)
- Shoe Size: Womens 5-10 (Mens 4-7.5)
- What they should’ve called the company instead: Cirque de Sole-yay
For Your Feet
Manny couldn’t stand the silence.
His wife, Carolyne, had been reading the contract for nearly an hour and hadn’t said a word. He couldn’t blame her, though; it was long, and besides, she was doing him a favor by reading it. It was his sale, after all. She was only the one reading it because Manny couldn’t stomach the thought.
He’d had a dream since he was a child: to create not just a circus, but one that celebrated the quirks of his hometown, the greatest city in the world, the Big Apple. But it had been a huge failure. And now he was selling it all to the highest bidder (who, to be clear, wasn’t even bidding very high).
“Huh,” Carolyne said.
“Oh god,” Manny said, laying his head down on the table. “It’s worse than I ever could’ve imagined, isn’t it? Maybe I don’t want to know the terms. Maybe I should just sign it.”
“That’s not it,” Carolyne said. “It doesn’t seem too bad, actually. The terms are far more favorable than I expected.”
Manny sat back up straight. “Really?”
“Yeah,” said Carolyne. “I’m just… confused.”
“How so?” Manny asked.
Carolyne pointed to one of the pages. “Well, here’s where they list what you’ll retain.”
“Anything good?”
“Plenty,” Carolyne said. “You retain the bodega cat marching band.”
“Okay,” said Manny.
“And the pizza dough tossing rat squad,” Carolyne went on.
“Okay,” said Manny.
“And all aspects of the pigeons’ precision pooping aerial act,” Carolyne said.
“Okay,” said Manny.
“You even get to keep Alfie, the borzoi who works in publishing,” Carolyne said.
Now Manny was confused too. “So what exactly are they buying?”
“It appears,” Carolyne said, turning the page, “that what they really want is the name. And also the custom socks you made for you and the rest of the crew. Not the physical socks, but the designs for them.”
“They’re buying my whole circus,” Manny said, “so they can take the name and the socks, but they don’t want any of the actual circus. Why would they do something like that?”
Carolyne shrugged. “Maybe this is one of those things where someone buys a fun, exciting company for arcane financial reasons and then strips out all the fun.”
“You think so?” Manny said.
“I can’t be sure,” Carolyne said. “But I have heard of stuff like that happening.”
