I have heard about SLIW for many years (mainly from television) but I have always dismissed it as a problem that affected other people. In fact, for a long time, I doubted its existence, but now I find that I too have acquired the condition. It is clearly not serious and while its impact is real, it is not life-threatening. I am not sure how many sufferers there are world-wide, but one can assume that it is widespread and definitely unreported. It may be a purely psychological condition, but as far as I know there have been no medical studies. My own theory, however, is that it falls in the domain of physics: it has all the hallmarks of a quantum-physical phenomenon.
I am talking, of course, about socks-lost-in-the-wash (SLIW). I have been doing my own washing for a long time now, and I have always managed to keep track of my socks. Over the last two years, however, I have had to make a space in my closet for unmatched footwear. It’s a kind of “singles bar” for socks. Most of these individuals eventually find their match but I have noticed a couple of loners who have been through many, many washing cycles but have taken up pretty much permanent residence among the bachelor socks.
Where on earth do they come from, and what happened to their partners? It is not inconceivable that they are hiding under a bed or behind the couch, but I have checked and the usual suspects are not in the obvious places and vice versa. One possibility suggested itself today. Our winter is quite warm and I can dry my washing outside in the sun. I wonder if birds may be stealing socks? La gazza ladra. Perhaps SLIW will eventually be solved by zoologists and not psychiatrists or physicists.
I am also puzzled by the same phenomenon. I have a big plastic box for those socks. At one time I counted all the pairless socks in our household and there were 76 individual socks, quite a pile. Now, this means that there are 76 more socks somewhere else. I gathered all the socks I could find just lying around in the laundry room, at the bottom of different bags used for carrying clothes around etc. I then did a very careful comparison (it’s quadratic time, mind you, so it took quite some time) and was able to find about 20 pairs. The rest, however, remained a mystery.
Our winters are not very good for drying socks outside, so we rarely do that even in the summer. I can find no plausible reason for this. But if I did, I tell you, one could win the Nobel-prize in physics with it; I am pretty sure that exactly the same phenomenon is responsible for the fact that our universe has more matter than antimatter.
Boring, practical solution to the problem: http://www.blacksox.ch
Um, I think I’ll pass. I’m not really in such dire need for socks and my loose morals and weak sense of colour permits me to easily wear unmatched pairs. It is the mystery here that intrigues me. But you do remind me that I need to write about our edible clothing idea soon.