The socks are out there! Be afraid...be very afraid!

 I live among thieves whose sole purpose is to steal the last vestige of my normal brain cells. Truly, it’s a conspiracy by the men in my house to drive me crazy. I don’t come by this notion without evidence. Need an example?

 Socks.

 I thought my brain cells worked just fine when I bought different brands of socks to make matching and sorting to each male easier. Hanes for one, Adidas for another, and Nike because “they’re just so cushion-y, Mom”.

The teenagers usually did their own laundry and I believed the sorting system worked well. Until there was a baseball tournament. Or, a theatre commitment. Or, a gazillion hours of weekend homework. And guess who got left with a pile of dirt-encrusted, used-to-be white, socks?

 No big deal, right? All I needed to do was sort clean socks by brand and distribute to the right boy. Shouldn’t even strain my brain. Except the boys had borrowed socks in some kind of clandestine barter system reminiscent of prisoners who traded secrets for cigarettes. And they had decided they couldn’t wear a pair of socks the other guy in the house had worn. Because the socks no longer felt “right”.

“He stretched them.” They wore the same size.

“He got the bottoms dirty and I can’t walk around like that.” What?

“He wore them with workout shoes. I only wear them with everyday tennis shoes.” Everyday tennis shoes? Seriously?

 And their poor dad – who rarely wore socks but would wear any kind when he needed to – couldn’t even find a matching pair thanks to the pilfering going on.

The fact that my boys could remember who wore which exact pair of socks when they couldn’t remember to brush their teeth half of the time did make me lose brain cells.

 Why I wasted one minute thinking about who wore whose socks is beyond reason.

 I knew the solution was simple. They needed to do their own sorting by whatever modus operandi worked for them. But where’s the fun in that for me? I had listened to weeks of whining and arguing about the “wrong” socks being in their drawers – even though they were the right socks, by brand. Weeks where I could swear I felt the “pop” of each cell as it disintegrated inside my head. Tell me: should I be the only one going cuckoo?

 I’m not going to spell out exactly what my payback plans were for my adorable crooks sons. Oh, no. But there was one thing the boys were right about: those Nike’s sure are “cushion-y”.

 Let’s see how many of their brain cells it takes to figure out who’s wearing them now.

Question: Do you ever feel like your children are driving you crazy over the simplest things? (Trick question: I already know the answer!)