ok. i have THE BEST sock collection i am aware of. like really ridiculous numbers of _pairs_ of socks. for years, i was always flaunting my cool socks to people, wearing my pants rolled up so people could see em, etc. i almost always was met with "oohs" and "aahs" and "where did you get those-s?" it was fun and made me fee, you know, cool and stylish in my own special way.

one day i was at a small gathering of friends and discovered that the tide had changed and left me and my lovely matching socks behind. i was the only one in the room with matching socks, cute and unique as they were... they all made fun of my out-of-date look, and laughed when i tried to impress them with the coolness of my pair of socks. i decided then and there that i would try to aspire to this new fashion height.

it has not been going well. i fold my socks in twos. i like them that way. i feel odd about wearing mismatched socks, even in the house...it makes me uncomfortable, like when someone's got hair in their eyes or an eyelash on their face. i just wanna fix it. even this morning, when i was about to dare to wear two mismatched dirty socks around the house as i puttered and computered, i found myself reaching for the other stripey sock i saw crunched up under the sofa and matched my socks yet again. so here i sit in my very cute but oh, so passe matching socks.

i do have ONE actual pair of mismatched socks that i wear proudly. they came out of a freebox, and though there were no pairs for them, they were tres cool so i had to have them (a black sock with red flames, and another black sock of the exact same size and thickness, with hannukah symbols all over it.) it was my first mismatched sock success, and i still have that 'pair', folded neatly together in my drawer. (does that even count?)

my boyfriend moving in has made matters much worse, because he is one of those guys who only buys the exact same color and make of socks, so he can't ever mismatch them, even in the dark.

i just joined this tribe to help me with my obsession with matching, and to try to find my mismatched sock-ability. please, won't you help me? send some advice for getting over the matching my momma taught me so many years ago? are there tricks? is it all about letting yourself lose one or two then matching them?

signed,
a sad sock matcher