Since August 1 is apparently “National Friendship Day,” I wanted to share a story about one of mine.
Chris has been a friend of mine for twenty years, and if I’m honest, he’s the closest friend I have beside my husband. We know each other’s secrets, and we share triumphs. He’s everything a person could want in a friend, and I’m lucky to have him.
He’s also my mortal enemy.
Chris, you see, is the kind of guy who plays the long game. And by playing the long game, I mean we have a prank he’s been pulling on me for the last five or so years. Maybe longer by now since I don’t have a starting date for this in my head.
It began with an ill-fated Facebook post. I was going away for a week and was posting about it so folks around me wouldn’t be worried when I wasn’t on social media during that time since I wouldn’t have internet. Knowing people would have the usual reaction of “it’s not good for home security to let people know you’re traveling,” I forestalled that by joking that since we lived with five other people. The worst thing that would happen would be a helpful housemate washed my colored and white laundry together and turned my socks pink.
I was wrong.
Now, before we go much further, I want to note that Chris has known for a very long time that pink is my absolute least favorite color. Up until recently, I loathed it, and I would avoid it at all costs. The pinker it is, the worse I feel about it. He knew this. It was not a secret.
That said, he sneaked a pair of pink socks into my luggage with my husband’s help, which earned a snicker when I got to where we were going. They were nice socks and quite comfortable, so while I wasn’t wild about the color, the joke and the quality of the socks made up for it. I wore them anyway and enjoyed my week away, blissfully unaware of the chaos happening back home.
When we returned, I was tipped off to the fact that something was amiss by a single, bright fuchsia sock draped over the handle of our apartment in the house. This troubled me for two reasons: I didn’t own any such color socks, and there was only one.
Suspicious, at this point, I put it in my pocket, and we went in to put our things away after the long drive.
Over the next several weeks, I found odd numbers of socks everywhere. My computer drawers, my keyboard tray, my violin case, inside my pillowcase, in my shoes (wadded up in the toe), in with my food in the refrigerator.
Always in odd numbers.
It started abating after a while, and I thought I might be safe. Again, I was wrong.
I started finding them in places not home. Like my church where I found them in the hymnals in my pew, amongst my music, stuck onto my conductor’s stick. Everywhere I went, there were socks. Worse, when we traveled to visit my grandmother several states away, a very confused concierge handed me a pink sock at the check-in desk of the hotel we stayed at which earned him a bunch of cussing. My husband, laughing, explained the joke, and the concierge got a good laugh out of it.
A year later, Chris and his partner, Jen, took my husband and I (though my mother joined us) to a D&D improv show for my birthday. We’d been a few other times and really enjoyed it. At the end of the performance, one of the performers hurled something out into the audience. My husband snatched it out of the air and handed it to me. It was, of course, a pink sock.
At that point I caused a commotion by leaping over my mother and husband to beat Chris with said sock and cause a scene while he giggled like the horrible goblin child he is. The sock ended up stuck in the rafters and may haunt the theater to this very day.
Needless to say, it has become a joke between us. And there has been a lot of laughter and accusations surrounding it for the last few years. Until I made the mistake of mentioning online that my pink socks were wearing through, and I was looking forward to wearing something not pink. They then started showing up again, and I have them in such quantity that I’ve been donating them to be sent to Ukraine as part of the relief effort for the refugees.
One of these days I will learn.
That said, I guess it’s become my signature at this point. Sir Terry Pratchett had his hat. I have pink socks.
