Sock Theory 0

I have 132 odd socks. Each week the count goes up. I gather them in a basket in my

laundry in the hope that one day they will be re-united with their lost sock mate. The

basket of lost socks was started as a place of hope, but now after years of hanging onto

partnerless socks I realise that for many of my foot based friends that it’s become time to

declare many of them, ‘a cold case’. There is no hope. The lost sock isn’t coming back.

It’s gone. This is not due to carelessness or an inconsistent methodology. I am persistent

and rigorous in my management of displaced socks. Lone socks are never returned to the

sock draw. They are shelved in lost sock basket awaiting reunion. Once a week I sit

cross legged on the carpet and organise a line up. Sadly, the prospects aren’t good. I only

manage to achieve about a 5% hook up rate. And so the mountain of disassociated

socks continues to grow. This has caused me to seriously ponder one of the most

common domestic existential crises. This is a shared phenomenon. Something so

mundane we have lost sight of the magic. So lets ask that question one more time, but

open our minds to the vastness of possibility. Where do socks go? Lost socks can’t all

be lost. They must still exist somewhere. Is there a sock shaped hole in the universe?

You may think this is insane. But its eminently more sensible than David ‘Avocado instead

of a Brain’ Wolfe’s declaration that gravity is a toxin and that the earth is flat. I suspect his

socks leave him in disgust all the time. (Perhaps the only way out is to commit sock

suicide in the nutribullet.) All socks go missing. That is a fact. You don’t need a particle

accelerator the size of the galaxy to prove that. You just need a washing machine. Now I

accept that there is some explainable sock loss. Perhaps one is dropped balled up and

tucked in the shoe on the way from the soccer field to the car. Perhaps one is lodged in

the dark crevice of the dryer. There may be a sock in the school bag. Lost property. One

under your bed. Up your bum. Even if we were to electronically track these socks I think

it would still only account for a very small percentage and still leave us with an alarming

number of unaccounted socks. These socks still exist. But not here. These socks cause

me to wonder if it’s in fact not misplacement at all, just ‘placement’ somewhere else. What

if socks aren’t actually lost at all? Just existing in another dimension. Our socks have

become inter dimensional time travellers. I mean, didn’t that astronaut say ‘one small step

for man’? And what do you wear while making that small step? A sock. What if our socks

were time travelling without us? String Theory provides the answer. The point like

particles of physics aren’t points at all. String Theory suggests they are one dimensional

strings propagating through space. In string theory we don’t just have the four dimensions

of height, width, length and Einstein’s crack at explaining spacetime. In string theory we

have up to 10 dimensions. Thats right. There are currently 6 dimensions I haven’t yet

searched for missing socks. These universes co-exist somewhere along the string,

perhaps a moment behind, or a moment after exactly where you are right now.

Somewhere in another dimension I haven’t even bought the sock yet, so not only is it not

lost, it doesn’t yet exist. So the question posed in multi-dimensional sock time is, ‘can I

lose something that doesn’t yet exist?’ Or perhaps, an even more complex question. Can

I find something I haven’t yet lost? I am wondering whether what we are talking about

here is S-Duality. (S being for Sock I think) This is where two seemingly different physical

systems turn out to be equivalent in a non trivial way. Think about it. Socks are the

manifestation of duality. They come in two’s.They are identical. Even a one legged man

must purchase two socks before he wears just one. I have written to Dr Brian Greene,

the world renowned particle physicist and cosmologist who is striving to solve the most

pertinent riddle of our time: string theory. You see while it hasn’t been disproven, it still

hasn’t been proven. The lost sock phenomenon could in fact be the clue. Dr Greene is

perplexing about this cosmic riddle but the answer is right under his nose. On his foot. His

sock. I have worked it out. A housewife’s guide to the galaxy. Sock Theory. Once we nail

that we save the world. And we get our socks back.