Mike Pound: Socks require strong packaging

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January 8, 2010

Anonymous The Joplin Globe Fri Jan 08, 2010, 10:23 AM CST

Thursday morning I finally got around to opening some socks I got for Christmas.

As Christmas gifts go, socks are sort of a win/lose deal.

I mean a pair of socks is a gift and I suppose you should never look a gift sock in the heel — so to speak — so that’s the win part of the deal. But, on the lose part of the deal, there is the fact that your gift is a pair of socks.

So on Christmas morning, when I opened my new socks, I said something like, “Oh great, socks. I sure can use some of these.” And then I tossed them in a pile and forgot about them. Until Thursday morning, when I found them sitting on top of my dresser drawer.

Actually I didn’t just get one pair of socks for Christmas. I got two packages of three pairs of socks, which means I now have six brand new pair of socks or, if you will, 12 individual socks. I am, for now, a sock tycoon.

I don’t buy new socks very often, so when I tried to detach a pair of socks from the other socks, I was surprised to find that socks somehow got placed on a Homeland Security watch list. That’s the only reason I can figure why the socks were bound together in some sort of force shield that made it virtually impossible to free them.

First of all, the socks were on tiny sock hangers, which are the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. I guess the folks who make and package socks figure that men will start hanging their socks on the tiny sock hangers in tiny sock closets.

I have two words for the people who make and package socks: We won’t.

Then, when you manage to pry the socks off of the tiny sock hangers, you find out that the socks are held together by some sort of plastic material that is next to impossible to break. The material used to hold the socks together was developed by NASA scientists trying to find something strong enough to tether astronauts during space walks.

The best way to cut through the plastic material, of course, is to use a pair of scissors. The worst way to cut through the plastic material is to use your teeth.

• Fact: 99.9 percent of all men will use their teeth to cut through the plastic material.

• Fact: 66.7 percent of those men will wind up swallowing the plastic material.

• Fact: Two percent of those men will rush themselves to the nearest hospital for treatment.

• Fact: The rest of the men will have another beer.

Once you manage to cut (or bite) your way through the plastic material you are now ready to separate your socks and put them on your feet.

Hah. Sometimes I crack myself up.

Nope, once you cut (or bite) through the plastic material, you have to take off the tiny little metal things they put at the top and bottom of each pair of socks. This is tough because most of the time, when you try to take of the little metal things, they fall onto the floor.

• Fact: 99.9 percent of men will look for the little metal things for 1.3 seconds and then forget about them.

• Fact: 87 percent of the little metal things will be swallowed by a household cat.

• Fact: 99.9 percent of those cats will later cough up the little metal things in fur balls roughly the size of a yak.

• Fact: 100 percent of those yak-sized fur balls will later be found by a man. When he puts on a pair of new socks.

Address correspondence to Mike Pound, c/o The Joplin Globe, P.O. Box 7, Joplin, MO 64802, or via e-mail at mpound@joplinglobe.com.

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Mike Pound: Socks require strong packaging

Joplin City Manager Mark Rohr wants the city to distribute weather radios to all Joplin homes that don’t have one. That’s 11,000 radios. Do you think that’s a good use of $300,440?

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