Today I am participating in Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop by answering the prompt: 4.) Write a funny story involving socks.

My husband has a thing for socks.  Really.  He buys them in bulk and often.  I don’t know what he does with all these socks, but I’ve given up trying to understand.  When we go to Target and he throws yet another bag of socks in the cart, I say nothing.  If I’ve learned anything in almost 17 years of marriage, I’ve learned to pick my battles.  And socks aren’t worth arguing about.  Except if they are holey–according to my husband, that is something to argue about.

Holey socks are the bane of his existence.  Normally oblivious to domestic affairs, the man goes ballistic if anyone in our house wears holey socks.  At first I thought that he was kidding, but he is not.  Not at all.  Unfortunately my son does not share his father’s disdain for holey socks, so you can imagine the arguments that happen in our house.  Or maybe you can’t, but let me tell you, it’s serious.   My husband will rant about how no child of his is going to wear holey socks when he works hard for this family to provide shelter, food, a private school education – and blemish-free socks.

I try to maintain a peaceful household by keeping my son in new socks, but he does his own laundry and I don’t always see when the socks are wearing thin.   And honestly my son just doesn’t care; he will just as soon wear holey socks as in-tact ones.

As I was packing for our trip to LA, I made sure all the socks were worthy.  It was the least that I could do for the man who was going to be working so hard in LA.  But I didn’t check the traveling socks.

As we removed our shoes at airport security, and my son walked through the metal detector, I saw that he had on the holiest socks ever.  With big gaping holes.   So big that there was actually more naked foot visible than sock.  My husband saw it too and his face said what he couldn’t in the presence of security guards: surprise, horror, disgust.   His worst fear about socks had been realized.  His kid was wearing holey socks for the whole world to see!

“What?” asked my son, with a characteristic teenage shrug.

He followed his father’s glare down to his feet.

“Oops, my bad.”

P.S. You may also like to read other posts about my funny family:

Naked And Holding A Dead Squirrel

How To Use Transportation in London (a cautionary tale)