Socks Are Wicked Important

I own a shit ton of socks.  When I moved to California in 1999, I decided to start collecting cool socks, thereby pigeonholing myself as a sock person.  That means I've received socks for pretty much every gift-giving event for the past 14 years, so I am now the proud owner of over 80 pairs of socks (that's over 160 individual socks, for those of you who are math challenged).

The other day I attended an Oktoberfest event while wearing the cute cat socks pictured above.  At one point, I heard some folks giggling behind me.  When I turned around to see what the fuck was so funny (and yes, that really is how my mind works), a young woman showed me her phone, which now featured a picture of my socks.  "Sorry," she told me.  "Hope that's okay.  I love your socks."

I'd be willing to bet that, within ten minutes of the picture being taken, my socks were featured on the girl's Facebook page and had about 50 likes, plus umpteen comments featuring pithy observations such as:  "OMG!  Cat socks!  LOL!"

And do you want to know why?  Because socks are important to people.  Much like alcohol.  If you post a picture of alcohol on Facebook with the label:  "ALCOHOL!  YAY!" everyone will love it.  You'll be getting notifications all day long.  People you haven't heard from since sixth grade will write paragraph-long responses explaining why they, too, think alcohol is totally yay-worthy.

So yes, socks & alcohol are excellent ways to bond with your friends on Facebook.  The same may not be true if you choose to post something about an international crisis or social justice calamity.  Those topics are simply not as yay-worthy, as they may stimulate painfully uncomfortable debates that pit your Facebook friends against one another in disastrous, fury-fueled exchanges between total strangers who have quickly and resolutely determined that they absolutely fucking hate one another.

On the other hand, you'll find no room for debate when it comes to people identifying as alcoholic sock whores.  Go figure.  But I suppose that's precisely what makes something like a pair of cute socks so damn important.  

(And awesome.)

(I love my socks.) 

(I have sock monkey socks, too.)

I was searching for a picture of sock monkey socks, but I found this instead.  
I think I'm in love.