NOTES FOR AN ARTICLE ON MISSING SOCKS
SOCRATES: inventor of the sock
DANTE: His nine-circle inferno originally had a tenth circle where foot fetishers, people who wear socks with sandals, and washing machine salesmen are doomed to pursue missing socks blowing in the infernal maelstrom
ISAAC NEWTON’s successor scientists: Just as Newton advanced the theory of gravitation after observing a falling apple, so did scientists who came after him devise the term “half-life” to describe the depreciating period of time following the purchase of a pair of socks before one goes missing, the same theory later applied to the fixed, invariable amount of time it takes half of an original sample of a radioactive substance like uranium, radium or carbon-14 to break down
HENRY VIII: He didn’t have his various wives sent to the guillotine because they were infertile, or couldn’t produce an heir. It was because they were inept in managing the laundry staff and socks kept turning up missing.
SHAKESPEARE’S RICHARD III: In the first draft of Act V, iv, 7, the king cried “My missing sock! My missing sock! My kingdom for my missing sock!” His editor insisted he change “sock” to “horse.”
THE ALAMO: The Mexicans were attacking the Alamo because a repatriated former California grove worker had told them that all the missing socks from Guadalajara were being used to stuff bedding in the fort.
1929 MARKET CRASH: It was actually caused by huge losses in sock futures due to the early onset of the missing sock phenomenon occurring after underage sock weavers walked off the job to protest in favor of proposed child labor laws, carrying with them thousands of individual socks from what had been pairs. The Sock Market later became known as the Stock Market to help cover up this story.
BAY OF PIGS: This attack was launched from Miami, which has notoriously sock-eating laundromats, so many of the invading Cubans were forced to wear boots without socks, causing them to founder on the beach and be defeated.
GOOD THINGS RESULTING FROM THE MISSING SOCK PHENOMENON: Sock monkeys, flip flops, the film “The Barefoot Contessa”
