Don't Des-Pair

My time draws near. I’ve led a rich life. I’ve loved and been loved. Made the right friends and the right enemies. Seen the sun rising over the mountains and setting over different mountains from the first mountains I just mentioned. I regret nothing.

Except one thing: all the time I spent trying to match socks.

You’d think first of all, that you’d just be able to buy the same black socks every time. But no, they’re never quite the same. Even if you buy the same brand, they keep making little tweaks to the size, the shade, the thickness, the elasticity. It’s really hard to tell the difference until you put them on - and then it’s impossible to ignore.

So when you take them out of the laundry, the detective work begins. Is this sock a little darker than that one? Or, wait, a little lighter? A little more of a blue undertone, or a brown? Or is it just the light in here? It starts with color.

But it doesn’t end there. There’s the thickness to consider. And the construction. Does it have that different little elastic band across the top? How wide is it? Is there a clearly defined sole, with a distinct weave, or is if the same all the way around?

Don’t forget the toe. First, match up the gold-toe ones, that’s easy. Then the ones with a reinforced toe, a little more difficult. Then it gets tricky. Does the toe seam go over the top of the toes, or across the front of the foot, parallel to the floor?

Now imagine this, once a week, for the sixty or seventy years of your adult life. I wish I had that time back now.

I wish I’d had the courage to wear clearly and distinctly matchable socks. Perhaps socks with bold, colorful patterns that made no bones about who their mate is. Socks that you could match as easily as looking at them. Maybe even socks you could match as you pull them out of the drawer!

But it was a different time. That just wasn’t done. And by the time fashions changed, I was an old man, set in my ways. That’s the only thing I envy about younger people: their freedom to wear whatever socks they please. I’m sure they all take advantage of it, to save themselves those wasted hours they’ll never get back. They’d have to be fools not to.