March 29th, 2007
Today I bought some socks at Costco. Virgin socks are one of life’s great pleasures. I absolutely love the experience of putting on brand new socks, socks that have never been sweated on, or washed, or stuffed in a runner all day, or otherwise tainted. They are just soft (yet curiously firm) and fresh smelling and delightful. Only underwear comes close to being as enjoyable when new.
Our friend Esan occasionally waxes poetic about what he’d do if he were absurdly rich, and I must say that if anyone on Earth deserves to be absurdly rich, it’s Esan , because only he will truly appreciate it. One of Esan’s many plans is to create a roll of pants, a great big spool of fresh pants, from which you pull off a new pair to wear every day. At the end of the day, you just toss your jeans, because tomorrow you’ll get a fresh pair off the spool.
Personally, I like my jeans broken in, but the spool idea is sound. If I were absurdly rich, I would have a spool of socks. Every day I would just pull off two fresh socks, and experience the joy of the virgin sock forever. I would then turn the end of day used socks into some kind of modern art piece, or perhaps just mail them all, one pair a day, to my landlord who said we can’t get a dog. I think he’d like that.
I’ve considered the spool of socks as well. The advantage of socks is that one doesn’t need to be absurdly rich…even a bad shopper like myself could get 365 pairs of socks for about a thousand bucks. That’s not cheap, but it’s low enough that I may have to put my money where my mouth is and do it someday. I’ll wait a while to see if I win the lottery first, though ($30 million this Saturday).
And I did some shopping last Sunday, so I’m wearing new socks myself as I type this. Mmmmmmm.