Enlightenment comes in many forms. Sometimes it
comes in the form on apple striking your head, or tripping over a pokeball, or
in the middle of bath (forcing you to leap up and run naked into the street
yelling “EUREKA!”). Life is funniest when the jokes on everyone, but everyone
thinks it’s funniest when the joke is on you. Mundaneness can illuminate the
obvious but it takes a fire to illuminate the oblivious.
I thought there were left socks. For as long as I
understood the concept of socks and was old enough to put them on my feet, I
have silently made a distinction between which socks, in a pair of socks, is
the left and the right partner. Now, some of you might already be silently
judging me for my foolishness but let’s break down my reasoning as a child.
The reasoning behind my logic was simple. I have a
left hand and a right hand. I also have a left glove and a right glove. I have
a left foot and right foot. I also have a left shoe and right shoe. It stands
to reason, that they would design a sock for the left foot and a sock for the
right foot. I internalized this decision, never sharing it with anyone because,
to me, it seemed too mundane a think to mention. Furthermore, no one ever
observed me looking at my socks to make the distinction. Even more so they
could’ve noticed me take a sock off and put it on the other foot when I, foolishly
mistaken, believed it to be on the wrong appendage. Perhaps it was my obsessive
compulsive order or something else. Before I elaborate further on the “something
else” I should probably explain how this epiphany came about.
It began during a lovely evening at the bonfire,
celebrating the birthday of one of my lady friends, in a hundred degree
weather. I was as jovial as jonquils as I threw conversation across the
flickering of the pretty pyre and perpetrated small jest at those closest to
me. I am not quite sure what the context of the conversation was, it could’ve
very well been vulgar, and I made the statement, “It is like how you can never
find the left socks you have lost in the wash.” Internally, this was a fine
simile. Instead, it left my friends perplexed. I tried to explain the analogy,
but was stopped. “There are no such things as left socks.” I stared at them,
then at my feet, I had just put out a small grass fire with my custom leather
Chucks and had been feeling victorious, yet as my foolishness was revealed I
felt the sting of realization.
I wanted to stand up, toss my chair into the fire,
then to rip the shoes of my feet and toss them in the fire, and then,
delicately, to rip the socks from my feet and throw them at the heavens before
running into the trees and howling a primordial howl of shame, confusion and, goats
that I would trip over.
