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Sunday, January 23, 2011

Black Socks

This morning we were on time for church. Barely. Still, let's give credit where credit is due.

We. Were. On. Time.

For some reason our children can wake up bright-eyed an bushy-tailed on a Saturday morning at, say, seven o'clock in the morning, but on Sundays we literally have to drag them out of bed—usually by 8:00 in the morning, sometimes later. I have kind of come to think of them as natural alarm clocks, but they've recently been rather defective, waking up when I want to hit snooze and sleeping in when I need to be woken up. And climbing into bed with us.

We only have one other alarm clock that does that.

I woke up this morning at around six o'clock and thought I was paralyzed—I tried to turn over but couldn't move. It only took me a moment to notice that I had a child resting in either nook of my arms. (I don't even know how these things happen). I had Andrew help me move them back into their own beds and then we went back to sleep until our alarm (the one on Andrew's iPod) went off shortly after 7:00.

Both of us were dressed before we even woke the girls up.

"My socks don't match," I commented to Andrew, "but I don't care because I'm wearing my boots to church so no one will see them."


"What do you mean they don't match?" he asked. "They're exactly the same."

"Yeah, but they don't match my outfit," I pointed out.

They'e somewhere between a non-photo and an electric blue in colour, though it could almost be an aquamarine. There's not much in my wardrobe that has a hope of matching that.

"But they match each other. That's typically what we mean when we say socks match."

"Only because you are a boy."

"No, seriously. When people think of socks matching they think of socks matching each other."

"No, seriously. When boys think of socks matching they think of socks matching each other. Girls assume that the socks match because they meticulously match them together when they fold the laundry so when they talk about matching socks they are thinking of whether or not they match their outfit."

"Well, when we went to the temple yesterday my socks didn't match. I had one new black sock and one old black sock on. They weren't the same shade of black so they didn't match."

"That's because you folded the darks the last time they were washed."

"Oh, yeah."

And I appreciate that, I really do, but when I fold the laundry I make sure his socks match—so two old socks get paired and two new socks get paired so that he always looks like he's wearing two black socks instead of one black sock and one not-so-black sock. No one questions the blackness of a not-so-black sock unless it is held up to a new black sock.

Our conversation over, we woke up the girls and got them settled in for breakfast. While we were all munching away, Rachel surveyed Andrew's outfit.

"Daddy, your socks don't match your shirt," she informed him. "They are black and your shirt is white."

Andrew and I burst out laughing.

She certainly is a girl, even if her idea of "matching" is monochromatic at this stage.

3 comments:

  1. You're right (as usual). Matching references the outfit. Matching each other is a given. :D

    Also, that alarm clock is COOL!!!! Do you really have one?

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  2. Just for the record, I read this out loud at our dinner table when we had company. It was a BIG HIT. Everybody thought it was hilarious. Danny disagrees with you about what socks matching means (after all, he's a man!) but he thought your explanation was spot on, very in depth. Hehe.

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  3. @ Amy -- Yes, we really have one. Andrew got it for Christmas from his mom.

    @ Kate -- So glad you enjoyed it!

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