as opposed to the wetter gnome . . .

what the deuce is up with the sock gnome in my drier?! you know of whom i speak, for i am sure you have had your own run in with him. he is the one that steals a single, solitary sock from the wash. unashamedly and remorselessly. and consistently. that devious little minion, what would he possibly want with all those socks of mine that he has stolen?!

a possible hypothesis is that the gnome (who shall be named, and henceforth referred to as, jared) is teasing me. obviously he wants me to know he is toying with my notion of control and awareness as pertains to my own laundry, and impishly imply that he is ultimately the one true sovereign authority in the realm of the laundry room. this notion seems so clear to me because, of all the items in a typical wash, he takes the one item that will be most noticeably missing, the only item that is paired with another, and is so blatantly at a loss without it's counterpart. jared could so easily take an entire shirt or some underwear, and i would forever wonder where i misplaced said article, if i even noticed its absence. yet he persists in taunting me with the conspicuous loss of one sock.

the reason he only deprives me of such a trivial item as a sock is because he can! he can easily get away with stealing socks, because of the very trivial nature of a sock. if you think about it, it's a brilliant item to steal for the sake of teasing. if it were anything more serious, it would undoubtedly attract actual attention, which would completely blow jared's cover. no gnome would actually want to be publicly discovered, accused and incarcerated, which is exactly what would happen if he started stealing cats, clarinets, cars, couches, or even designer jeans. but no, jared is very smart, and has successfully stayed under the radar for many many years by adhering to this simple ploy.

as far as the question of where does this massive stockpile of missing socks go, it is clear to me that jared eats them. he has to have something other than lints trap scraps and drier sheet cuisine to eat, especially since i don't ever run my leftover cheesy tuna casserole through the drier.

if i was smart, i'd soak an entire load of socks in anti-freeze and cyanide and toss that in the drier. but i don't know if it's worth the risk of possibly ruining all those socks.