Merino wool socks - Jan 31 Morning

The merino wool socks sit on the table right now, all done up in cardboard and little plastic thingies. Tomorrow at this time they will be encasing my feet and the story will begin, but for now we shall go in for the backstory.

At the onset of our recent automotive trip from Kansas City to St Louis and then to Memphis and back, Debbie announced that she had a gift for me. But then she didn’t give it to me. So this is, you know, how you build up suspense, how you prepare the stage for a delightful surprise, but when the curtain finally rose, it was a pair of socks. Socks. What was the underwear store closed? I tossed them with disdain into the backseat.

“You know, they’re merino wool,” she said hopefully as the miles rolled by.

“Everything is made of something,” I replied, folding my arms and staring stoically at the road, and the subject was closed.

Until it came up in St Louis on the way back when we were dining in Maplewood with Gumbah and Sadie and Falsetto Boy. Oh Falsetto Boy, the attention always shifts at the mention of his name. You had dinner with Falsetto Boy? What’s he like? A very fine young man, a vegetarian, “I would not harm a fly.” he said after ordering his veggie burger, but then he reconsidered, “Well maybe a fly.”

Anyway somehow the subject of the socks came up and their composition was considered. “Merino wool?” Falsetto Boy remarked, “Aren’t those the socks that you can wear forever and they don’t smell so you never have to wash them?” Falsetto Boy is very well read and has his thumb on the pulse of the tubes of the internet.

I paused in mid-chew of my grilled cheese. Don’t smell, never have to wash? You could put them on at the end of flip flop season and wear them clear till it came again? You would never have to endure the soul-crushing boredom of sorting your socks? I was all ears.

I noticed that Gumbah and Sadie pooh poohed this a bit, like maybe all winter was a little extreme. Well fine people, raised a fine son, but sometimes just a wee bit fuddy duddy.

“We don’t go in for that xtreme stuff do we Ma Bah?” he asks and she replies, “No we don’t Pa Bah.”

But me, you know, I am a man of adventure, and right at this very moment, sixteen short hours from feb. Ready to plunge into the merino sock adventure, do you dare to follow me?