I can only assume that the stories online are true sometimes. Laundry has this mystical ability to hide. I completely understand how my kids can't find theirs because I have watched as they remove their socks and drift them across the room in separate directions. I'm sure there is one in the bottom of an old toy box that was scattered from its partner like a para trooper late jumping from a plane.
I'm an adult! How on earth can one of my socks go missing? Did I somehow miss my 3 point jump shot from across the room? Maybe I should start putting my socks in my pants pockets when I put them in the laundry bin. Everything that sits in your pant pockets seems to wriggle itself out and present itself with pride at the bottom of the washer...or even more proudly in the bin of the dryer seemingly yelling.."Look! I made it through both cycles!" One never has to worry about whether my guitar picks are sanitized. When I need a new one I just go to the laundry room where they sit glistening in the washer drum.
Really though, it does puzzle me on the sock thing. How does the washing machine find a way to digest socks so that they are never seen again. Am I the only person that has a grocery store bag in the basement full of orphaned socks just waiting to be matched up with their long lost partners? I bet there are socks in that bag that have been in there for five years waiting like a dog at the front door for their owners to come home. I would and have gone through that bag, paired up the lucky survivors, and thrown out the rest only to start a new collection. What inevitably happens is that almost immediately the others begin to show themselves or is it really them? Did you throw out the one with only one line across the top...wait this is a grey line not a white one...yup that's the one I was looking for. Damn, that one didn't even have a hole in the toe.
My kids don't even care. They have absolutely no reservation whatsoever to put on a polka-dotted red sock on one foot and a yellow plaid printed sock on the other. Yep, ditch the shoes and walk all through their grandmothers house parading around looking like a rodeo clown and showcasing our lack of basic housekeeping ability.
It's never ending. Quite literally it is never ending. It's something that has to be done from the time you move out of your house as an early adult until you can't possibly do it on your own anymore. It's a life sentence. The temptation has to be there to become Bart Simpson and simply wear the same thing every single day. It worked for the Fonz and Red Green....Darth Vader? Maybe the Tibetan monks are so at peace with meditation because they don't have that yoke to bear. Wake up, on with the robe and go.
I guess until someone invents "Find my iSocks" then we will never quite understand the great laundry mystery, so until then you may see me washing my car this summer with a Hanes hand mitt. You never know, I may find another guitar pick!