The lost sock conspiracy---any answers?!?!

Well if you really want to know where all the lost socks have gone, just ask Ren and Stimpy. Skip ahead to about 4:30 min Lost Left Socks

reply to post by hotpinkurinalmint


THIS IS SO TRUE! i bought like 3 packs of socks in august and i probably have 4 pairs left. it's so messed up. where do they go? i'm not taking them off outside my room. they're not piling up in my room. someone is taking these socks.

Originally posted by FalseParadigm
I have been trying to figger that out for YEARS.
I buy packs of socks, same color and style, and with a month, they are missing.
I stopped washing my clothes with anyone elses, I am meticulous about checking inside legs and sleeves, and cuffs, and yet I am missing socks.
The same for my kids.
This year alsone I have bought at least 50 pairs for each of them, and they have about 7 pairs...
No cats, just a free range hamster, who doesn't take them... They have been going missing since before the hamster.
What gets me is when I found brand new socks that I had just bought in the basment of my mothers house.. No way those socks got there on their own.. 67 miles away..
Also, I have found socks in my clothes that I do not own.. Never a pair, just one or two here and there.
I have come to the decision that there is an indterimentional worn hole in driers and when any two driers are started up at the same time, and they have the same resonant friequency, a portal opens, and they transport from one drier to another.
Somewhere someone has all my socks.

I have had socks and underpants going missing for 26 years! We are talking 20 pairs a year of socks and at least 10 of underpants so thats over 1000 socks and 250 pants... My daughter was born 14 years ago and she has the same problem all her pants and socks also gradually disappear. I have lived in 6 different places during the period and have checked the obvious such as pets and the insides of the washer/dryer. We do not have an home help nor anybody who has access to the clothes. I even got my wife to hand wash these items and leave them to dry on a drier and they still slowly disappeared. Seemed like a complete mystery until like Sherlock Holmes I used deduction theory - "Once you have removed all the other possibilities whatever is left no matter how improbable must be true".

So I looked at what changed 26 years ago - well I got married. Before this I lived on my own and before that with my parents - no missing socks/pants. Then I remembered a teacher I had when I was at high school. He had a very strange quirk - every 20 or so minutes he would leave the class and go to the toilets and wash his hands. Since he was a science teacher often he was in the lab and could use a sink there for the same task. Strangely he was completely unaware of his behavoir. When we "caught" him in the act he would claim if in the toilet that he had just used the toilet (which was untrue) or if in the lab that he must have split some chemicals on his hands (again untrue). He was completely unaware that he was doing this 20 times plus every day. Something in his past had created an automated response and he was unconcious of it.

So since socks and pants do not walk by themselves (on this planet at least) and since it's unlikely that our bathroom has a blackhole or other cosmic phenomena at work in it I was left with human intervention. We do have cats at present but the socks disappeared when we had none. Also each time we moved house I packed everything and no fantastic cat stash sock/pant pile discoveries happened.

So by deduction it was me, my daughter or my wife that were removing the socks/pants for some unknown reason. Since it never happened when I lived alone and it happened both before my daughter was born and before she knew what a sock actually was then it must somehow be my wife. She denied that she had touched them and after 26 years together I know she is truthful but then I remembered that science teacher. So I deduced that for some reason my wife was washing them (or not) then putting them in the trash and not remembering it. It had to be the trash otherwise on moving and packing I would have found the stash. I concluded if this was the case it was some childhood reaction to dirty clothes perhaps linked to puberty that had caused a behavoiral quirk. Her underware never disappeared so it was connected to "others" not herself. Also my daughter now often does her own washing and when she does nothing of hers goes missing. This seemed very surprising but a good theory that matched all the facts and avoided "supernatural" causes. So I decided to check the trash (a nasty job) before the dustman took it each week saying nothing to my wife about my theory. Guess what I found... pants and socks.... one or two at a time but they were there and not holed or old ones but new ones as well.

Mystery solved Dr Watson and since I am a curious man I now plan to place a cam overlooking the trash to see how it happens but I guess its similar to the science teacher. However I have no idea how to deal with it - my wife will never accept it and it's no more her fault than my science teachers problem with dirty hands. So I will wash my own socks and pants in future an tell my daughter to do hers!

My guess is this is real cause of many of these apprently impossible cases. Apprently (I have a friend who is a psychologist) many unconcient behavoirs like this are linked to hygene phobias in childhood and he agrees I have found in my case at least the solution to my particular sock mystery. He says it's harmless and best ignored. People who do things like this normally only trigger the behavoir when they believe they are unobserved and it's completely unconcious them having no recollection afterwards - so my science teacher was unusual in that he did it in front of a class of amused teenagers. But by doing it he gave me the clue to solving my sock/pant problem. But why did it take me 26 years to figure it out??

I thought I could lay my hands on a cartoon clipping which explains the whole thing.
Never mind, I think I know it by heart.
It was a narrative cartoon by Jules Pfeiffer, dated c1975, and the story line goes like this;

"I went to the laundromat.
Included in the wash were ten pairs of socks.
Out of the machine, came seven pairs of socks and one black sock.

On the following week, I went to the laundromat.
Included in the wash were seven pairs of socks.
Out of the machine came four pairs of socks, one blue sock, and one red sock.

On the following day, I went to the laundromat.
As an experiment, I put in nothing except my last four pairs of socks.
Out of the machine came a body-stocking.
Inside the body stocking I found a note.
The note said "Quit playing around with the laws of nature, and bring the machine more socks"

Well,I can solve this mystery of missing socks.

Tumble dryers have a felt ring/band in the back that allows the drum to turn against the static(non-turning) back wall of the dryer.

Over a period of time through use this felt wears down and sometimes because of buttons and zippers it can get torn.

Small items can and do slip though and end up under the dryer.

This is not just socks but change also.

Look under your dryers you will probably find all the missing socks and a whole bunch of change!

My missing socks can be attributed to the fact that I have my teenage boys fold clothes. They often don't bother to match socks together and frequently one of my white crew socks will be found (eventually) rolled into one of my wife's pink ankle socks.

Also, my wife wears socks to bed in the winter and for some bizarre reason one of her feet will get warm in the middle of the night. So in her sleep she will pull one of them off and it ends up trapped at the foot of the bed between the sheets. I harvest these socks when I change the sheets and return them, to the circle of laundry

Substitute Socks for underpants...



Thats the plan...

The Fearies steal them & use them as sleeping bags.

our wives all have one-legged homeless lovers ...... and that is where our socks go

I am convinced they are with Jesus. And we are reunited with them when we got to heaven.
And for the parents: all the missing nuks are there too.

It's gnomes. There are gnomes living in your dryer, stealing your socks and waiting for a time in which they will drag them all out and barter with you for them for any precious metals you might have so they can take them back with them through their dryer-portals to their hidey-holes.

GNOMES, MAN. GNOMES. D: