Darn, My Sox

The dialogue below came from a discussion among EMPEHI 1960's Classes Graduates. If you would like to join our brilliant group send Craig Hullinger MPHS 66 an email to morganparkhigh@gmail.com and craighullinger@gmail.com

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My wife and I have a running debate about clothing.  I say Waste Not, Want Not, meaning wear clothing until it is worn out.  

She takes the opposite view and buys us many more clothes than we can possibly use. So we provide GoodWill and Salvation Army with boatloads of older but still serviceable clothes.

The sock is a case in point. Now I agree it is a bit shopworn. Nevertheless it can still be worn.  And it provides freedom and aeration to my feet and is much more economical than buying new socks. It is green and sustainable to wear old, slightly used socks, rather than buying new socks. My Lady Boss insists that it be thrown away.

 

DARN MY SOCKS

I pointed out to her that if she would darn my socks we could keep using them. She said something unprintable about my socks but it did not include the word Darn. More emphatic, I would say. And not very polite.

OK, she wins. Out goes the sock. A sad loss. I hope it has a good afterlife. I don’t suppose GoodWill wants it.

 

AND

When I was single I hit on the concept of always buying identical socks.  This way you never had to take the time to mate and pair them - since all my socks were the same they all worked.  Sadly my wife does not follow this simple precept and continues to buy many many socks with different designs. Finding mates for my multitude of socks is difficult if not impossible.  

 

Sartorial Excellence

I am careless with clothing.  I don't really care all that much. And wearing unmatched socks is ok, as long as they don't clash too much.  But once at a Planning Commission meeting I noticed that I was wearing unmatched shoes.  I was a bit embarrassed and tried to keep one foot mostly under the table when I rose to point out items on the map. I was a consultant to the Planning Commission. 

But then I thought it was funny and so outed myself.  The Commision members thought it was humorous but no doubt wondered why they were paying me to guide the community's long range future when I was not able to wear matching shoes.

I was of course a bad fit for the Marine Corps which is fanatical about appearance. And so they trained me to be careful about wearing the uniform.  And I did better, but my troops frequently fiddled with my medals before an important event to make sure they were correct and they were not embarrassed by me.

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I always wore colorful socks when my office was in the Bridgeview courthouse.  The cafeteria manager would check my socks. If colorful enough,  he bought my coffee 

Tom

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Those darn medals. I had all my rows of medals put on one big piece of velcro. That way if I found a big enough wall I could display them there also.

Pete

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Your wife wins! Bye-bye Holy Sox!

Marie

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Craig, mismatched socks are the in thing now with the younger set, and I presume, the young at heart, too.  Kudos.

Will

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Who knew?  Great idea.  I will run with it. Actually, I already do that, but I did not know I was trendy.

 

I suggest this to my wife, that she wear one earring when she has lost the other, or wear unmatched earrings, but so far she has not agreed. Seems quite logical to me.

Craig

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Mismatched earrings are "in", so are mismatched socks and even mismatched shoes. I've seen soccer players wearing 2 different colored shoes.  So you are really "hip" and a trendsetter, 

Marie

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Good to know!  "Hip and a Trendsetter"  Cool. Although I suppose that a Hip Trendsetting 73 year old would not say "cool'.

Craig

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So next time I mismatch earrings, socks or shoes I will be cool!! How about if I have a shirt on inside out?    

Sandy

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Inside out is good,  and a well known way to wear your shirt for two days.  Or four or six or thirty six if you wish.

 

Green and sustainable. Saves energy and washing and soap and water.  

 

Actually, of course, never washing your clothes would be even more green.

 

I know someone like that, but he was in the 65 class. 

 

Reminds me of the great country and western song.

 

 

Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes

And found my cleanest dirty shirt

It's the one I'm wearin'

 

Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down lyrics - Kris Kristofferson

Well I woke up Sunday morning

With no way to hold my head, that didn't hurt

And the beer I had for breakfast

Wasn't bad so I had one more for dessert

Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes

And found my cleanest dirty shirt

It's the one I'm wearin'

And I shaved my face and combed my hair

And stumbled down the stairs to meet the day

I'd smoked my brain the night before

Or I smoked so much the night before

With cigarettes and songs that I've been pickin'

My mouth was like an ashtray I'd been lickin'

But I lit my first and watched a small kid

Cussin' at a can that he was kicking

Then I crossed the empty street

And caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin' chicken

And it took me back to somethin'

That I'd lost somehow somewhere along the way

Chorus:

On the Sunday morning sidewalks

Wishing Lord that I was stoned

'Cause there is something in a Sunday

That makes a body feel alone

And there's nothin' short of dyin'

Half as lonesome as the sound

On the sleepin' city side walks

Sunday mornin' comin' down

In the park I saw a daddy

With a laughing little girl who he was swingin'

And I stopped beside a Sunday school

And listened to the song that they were singin'

Then I headed back for home and

Somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin'

And it echoed thru the canyon like

The disappearing dreams of yesterday.

Chorus:

On the Sunday morning sidewalks

Wishing Lord that I was stoned

'Cause there is something in a Sunday

That makes a body feel alone

And there's nothin' short of dyin'

Half as lonesome as the sound

On the sleepin' city side walks

Sunday mornin' comin' down.

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Sorry but I have to agree with Beth. The socks had a good run though.

Sandy

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Good advice. 

Sandy

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Try some Bombas. Maybe you’ll rethink your sock choices. I doubt if your socks provide an odor free environment for Beth.

Pete

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I did not know what Bombas meant and had to look it up.  I suppose my lack of knowledge hurts my image as a "Hip and a Trendsetter" .

Bombas is a comfort focused sock and apparel brand with a mission to help those in need. One purchased = one donated, always and forever.

Bombas.com   Bombas

Craig

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Let's all chip in to buy Craig a new pair of socks!!!

Pete

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Excellent idea! I will set up the Buy Craig Sox Go Fund Me page ASAP

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Na, I am ok now that Will told me it was fashionable to wear unmatched socks. I have plenty of those. Thank you, Will.

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Socks v sox.  As I wrote this missive I alternately used sox and socks. My spell / grammar checker said use socks.  But some sources accept the use.

 

Why the White Sox aren’t the White Socks.

By Daniel Engber OCT 25, 2005

Why are these teams “Sox” rather than “Socks”?

 

“They followed the fashion of the times. Many early baseball teams were named after their uniform colors. In the 19th century, there were clubs called the Red Stockings, Brown Stockings, and Blue Stockings. Newspapers like the Chicago Tribune often shortened these nicknames to “Sox.” When Charlie Comiskey founded the American League’s Chicago White Stockings in 1901, the Tribune wasted no time in dubbing them the White Sox. Boston’s AL franchise seems not to have had an official name during its first few years. Reporters called them different names on different days, including the Americans (to distinguish them from Boston’s National League team), the Bostons, the Plymouth Rocks, and the Beaneaters. In late 1907, the club’s owner settled on the Red Sox.”

 

Why the love affair with the letter “x”? The formation of the modern baseball leagues coincides, more or less, with a broad movement to simplify English spelling. The father of the movement, Noah Webster, had pushed to create a “national language” a century earlier. Webster wanted to distinguish American English from British English by correcting irregular spellings and eliminating silent letters. Some of Webster’s suggestions took—”jail” for “gaol”—while others haven’t caught on—”groop” for “group.”

 

Near the turn of the century, advocacy groups like the Spelling Simplification Board pushed for spelling reform with renewed vigor; they argued that millions of dollars were wasted on printing useless letters. The editor of the Chicago Tribune, Joseph Medill, supported the idea. Medill stripped final “e”s from words like “favorite” in the pages of his newspaper and even suggested more wholesale changes that would have made written English look something like e-mail spam. In 1906, Teddy Roosevelt ordered the government printer to adopt some simplified spellings—such as replacing the suffix “-ed” with “-t” at the end of many words—for official correspondence. Congress responded by passing a bill in support of standard orthography later that year.

 

By the first decade of the 1900s, “sox” was already a common way to shorten “socks.” The “x” version of the word frequently appeared in advertisements for hosiery, for example. And in his 1921 tome The American Language, H.L. Mencken described “sox” as a “vigorous newcomer.” “The White Sox are known to all Americans; the White Socks would seem strange,” he wrote.

The spelling reform movement weakened over the course of the 20th century. But by the time “sox” fell out of fashion, the baseball nicknames were already entrenched in the sports pages and in the hearts of the teams’ fans.”

 

Click to read the full article:

 

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/10/why-the-white-sox-aren-t-the-white-socks.html

 

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Socks v Sox, very interesting. I think it is fine to use both spellings. Interesting that other similar words would not sound correct. Most of the list below are real words, often with a different definition for “x” v “ocks”.  Some are not real words. Some of them have no meaning, or very different meanings, and some are foreign words that have worked their way into English. 

 

Box v Bocks

Lox v Locks

Cox v Cocks

Mox v Mocks

Dox v Docks

Fox v Focks

Gox v Gocks

Hox v Hocks

Jox v Jocks

Xox v Xocks

 

Probably continues through the alphabet, but I decided that this sux and will not continue.

 

    https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/what-is-lox/

Craig

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Just don't mix White Sox with Red Sox....

Marie

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Could be a problem. I am somewhat color blind, and as my wife frequently reminds me, taste blind. 

 

Which makes it easy - wear whatever you want and don't worry about it. One of the old guys that wears loud colorful goofy clothes and does not worry about it.

Craig

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Noah Webster must be spinning in his grave the way kids have overly contracted the language in texts and such.  Like paw brb for parents are watching.  Be right back.

 

The military and Mensa organizations use acronyms to speed communication.  Probably others, too.  Newcomers learn to quickly adapt, but most commercial operations don't want to make prospective customers uncomfortable, so stick to longhand.

Will

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I spend WAY too much time searching acronyms on google. Sometimes your (not you personally) shortcut adds minutes to my trying to figure what your cryptic initials mean. Not a good time spender.

Tom

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I worked once with a golf pro who always dressed to the nines. A mutual friend imparted that Ken was severely colorblind. His wife sewed threads into every article of clothing 1 thread went with 1 thread, 2 with 2, etc. He never failed to dress appropriately.

Tom

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Color blind story - in the early years of my marriage, being "starving students", I would darn holes in my husband's socks.  One day, he purchased the thread to be used to darn his socks.  I protested to him that he had purchased brown thread and his socks were black.  He said as he couldn't see the difference in color and the holes were on the bottom of his socks, it didn't matter to him what color the thread was.  So, darn his socks I did.  His parents came to visit.  While sitting and visiting, he took off his shoes and put his feet up.  His mother shrieked, "Don't move!.  You have chocolate on the bottom of your socks."  We all had a good chuckle when I explained it was merely the darning of the holes with brown thread.  Haven't darned socks in many, many years.

 

Pam 

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Great story

 

Marie

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One day in traffic behind a really blah-colored car, I commented to my wife, "why would anyone buy that color car?"  She replied, maybe they are color blind, so they all look the same to them and that color was less expensive.  It was one of those "Duh-moments" for me, as she was right of course.  I no longer criticize color choices any more.

 

Will

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Great story. My first husband, a well off college professor, expected me to darn his socks. Guess who lost that one?

 

Sandy

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Allen sent an email on this subject, but it had no text in the email.

 

 

We must have knocked his sox off.

 

Craig

 

 

 

THE END