The Mystery Of The Missing Socks

We have a little sock problem in this house: they don’t always make it through the wash in pairs. I have a small, decorative basket in our family room, creatively referred to as “The Sock Basket”, which holds all the single socks waiting for a mate. Once a week or so, I bring the basket, which looks decidedly less decorative when it’s overflowing with socks, to the couch and I sort the socks while I watch something on television.

That little sock problem recently compounded into a mystery: I personally have been experiencing a sock shortage for the past couple of months, which is weird because my socks aren’t difficult to pick out from the bunch. Jim always wears black socks to work and white sport socks on the weekends and for workouts. The boys wear the same kind of white sport socks, mostly.

My socks are more colorful. I wear socks of all different hues with my jeans, and even my white workout socks have colorful embellishments on the top edge or at the toe. It’s odd that many of them have been missing in action. I was pretty certain that the either the washer was eating them or the boys were putting them away in their drawers out of some kind of weird laziness.

Last night, however, I figured it out.
I was at the health club, getting ready to teach my spin class.

Bike set-up: Check.
iPod plugged in: Check.
Bike shoes on: Check.
Fans turned on: Check.
Microphone belt on: Check.

All I needed was the windscreen for my microphone headset. (The windscreen is that little black foam ball that slides onto the microphone, whose purpose is to protect the microphone and to make it so that my class doesn’t hear every single breath I take.) All of us instructors use our own personal windscreen, and I keep mine in my CD case, which is in my gym bag.

I pulled the CD case out of my bag so I could unzip it and grab my windscreen, and suddenly something caught my eye.

Socks. About eighteen of them. Dirty. In the bottom of my gym bag.

Well, what can I say…mystery solved?

Coming up on Suburban Scrawl Mystery Theater:

Why can’t I seem to remember to take the dirty socks out of my gym bag and put them in the laundry room?

Stay tuned.

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