When they first landed in their new home, they were young and brash, and clean, oh so very clean. (They smelled nice too!) They endured the trip from their previous home with stoic acceptance, bidding farewell to their fellows without tears, accepting that this was the natural order of things. This was what all their brief lives had been leading up to, and they were finally able to fulfill the purpose for which they were created.
Once they arrived, they were settled quickly into their new homes, in pairs, as was their custom. They all awaited the moment when they would finally emerge into the light.
And slowly, pair by pair, they left the four walls of their domicile and fulfilled that purpose. For most of their kind, life would be an endless round of departing in the morning, traveling around for a day, then at the end of the day being taken to a different place and waiting there for a few days until they took a trip to the place of cleansing, and finally arriving back to their domicile, all to be done over and over again without ceasing until time and stress took their toll and they were finally finished, washed up, and discarded. It was a hard life, but one that they accepted.
But what was this? What? When some of them arrived at some households, they found an entirely different routine. Instead of leaving on a morning and travelling around for a day, they were subjected to days and sometimes (the horror!) even a whole week of travel. Sometimes the travel took place outside, without the benefit of shoes to protect them from the dirt and harsh conditions. And sometimes when there were shoes, the conditions become so noisome and fetid that when they were finally released from their travel, they were odorous and filthy. And even then their troubles did not end, for instead of being taken to await cleansing, often they were unceremoniously dumped into inaccessible locations, where they lay emitting fumes and cursing those who put them there.
And so, one by one, and two by two, these socks migrated where no foul odor would ever touch them,
where the wicked (children) cease from troubling, and where no hole or careless big toe could ever hurt them again. They went to the place where socks go to remain hidden and inaccessible for the rest of their lives. It's called the Bermuda Socktangle.
The center of the Bermuda Socktangle is in Redford, Michigan, located in the home of the Tinklenberg Family. More socks have disappeared in the Tinklenberg house than in any other place in the world. Socks know when they've found a good place to live and they also know when they have found a bad one. And the Tinklenberg house is definitely a bad, sad place to live.
The children missed their socks when they disappeared, oh yes, they did. "Where are the knitted ribs that kept my feet warm, oh so very long, long ago? Where is the fuzziness that tickled my toes? Where is the feety odor that assaulted my nose? Whence have they gone? Oh, brave socks of white (well, once they were white!), blue, and green (and orange and red and pink and...well, you get the picture!) Their like shalt never, ever be seen again! Mom, do you have a pair of socks I can borrow, just for today?"
Alas, the Mom's socks also disappear, but she also has pairs of socks that are older than her children that still serve her faithfully. She sits alone at night, listening to the washing machine chugging away, knowing that even though she has put every sock she could find in the machine, that there were far too many singleton socks and socks that were thrown away due to holes (how could they stand to wear them with such big holes in them?), so that the chances of her children finding a matching pair of socks to wear to school the next day were pretty slim.
So today, the circle of life will begin again, as the Mom departs for Target, there to again purchase socks for her children, bringing them home to live in the drawers for a brief time, then it will be back to the same dysfunctional sock life that causes so many socks to depart into the Bermuda Socktangle. Pray for socks, everyone. Pray for them. Ask not for whom the washer chugs, it chugs for thee.












































