Mom, I Can't Find Any Socks

 

I still don’t understand how it can take a child so long to get ready to leave the house.  It’s a fairly simple process.  Usually, he just needs to put on his socks and shoes, find his coat, and that’s it.  My guess is that it should take about ten minutes.  Obviously, I’m an optimistic person, either that or a very naïve one.

“Googie, did you put your shoes on yet?” I yell from the other room.

“Almost,” he replies.

“Hurry up.  We have to leave in ten minutes.”

“Mom, I can’t find my shirt,” he adds five minutes later.

“What? You just had a shirt on.” I continue to yell from the other room.

“Mom, I can’t find my shirt.” He whines. Then he adds, “Do you know where my shoes are?”

“They’re in the hall closet, right in front of you”

“No they’re not.  Mom , where did you put my shoes?”

“Put your shirt on,” I say as I start to walk over to him.  On the way, I find his shirt.  When I get there, he's in the hallway sitting in front of the closet, reading a book about astronomy, and drawing a diagram of a spiral galaxy.  Thank goodness he's still wearing his pants!  I reach into the hall closet, retrieve his shoes, and hand the shirt and shoes to him “Here are your shirt and shoes.  Where are your socks?”

“Mom,” he whines, “I can’t find any socks.”

“Did you look in your drawer?”

“Yes, there are no socks there.  There never are!”  he yells.  

Even though I remember having put socks in his drawer the day before, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. This child is known for wearing a new pair of socks each time he puts on his shoes, and he has a habit of putting clean clothes in the dirty clothes hamper. He's also known for losing socks and leaving them in unexpected places, so he might be right.  There might not be any socks in his room.  Not to be outdone, once, I conveniently left a big laundry basket full of unmatched socks in the laundry room.  That's right, I only did that once (Wait a second while I adjust my halo.  It's a bit crooked).  By now, I'm beginning to think that he might be right. 

“Did you look?  Let’s go over there right now and see if we can find any.”  We walk into his room and look in his sock drawer.

Obviously, it's been more than ten minutes by now, and we still have to wait for him to put on his socks, his shoes, and find his coat.  Oh, yes, we still have to find his coat, and we all know that his coat won't be in the hall closet like it was a few minutes ago.