Odd Socks
By Sophia Parvizi-Wayne
Duke Student, leader of national campaign on mental health, Cross Country All-ACC, fashion alchemist, Huffington Post writer, and all-around world-runner
On a desk is a spread. There are notes; well highlighted, overly in depth and taken a week before their due use. There is a coffee cup on its fourth re-fill of the day, the edges of the lid frayed from taking it off each time. There is a packet of sugar-free Trident spearmint gum and a MacBook Air embellished with punny stickers and millennial pink quotes. On the desk, there is order.
There is a backpack; the one reserved for those with superior athletics skills. It is blue and visible. Inside the backpack there is a diary; un-neat not from her lacklustre but her lack of time. She reiterates: Busy is good. There is strength in busy. There are white sneakers; just muddy enough to prove the miles she has run but not muddy enough to really be considered muddy. Perhaps worn is better. This is order.
Moving to the bedroom, it isn’t tidy. It is a sign of a woman who doesn’t need sleep because she is either working or proving her social worth in shots. Definitely not alcoholism but enough to look like she’s having a good time. The calendar above the bed is suffocated with multi-coloured scribbles, colour-coded by interviews, deadlines, sporting events and social commitments. She has forgotten to leave a colour for alone time. She has remembered to leave a candle on her bedside table, though. Proof she values the necessity of downtime. The bedroom is a place of order.
Below the bed is a box, hidden but essential. She takes something from the box each-day and has moments where she freaks a little bit, thinking she can't find it. It's her box, but her box of commonalities.
Socks. Everybody needs them and everybody, or at least the hygienic ones, endeavour to wear them most days. She often frowns upon receiving them at birthdays and Christmases yet she struggles to discard her old socks. Even the ones where her big toe has ended up making a hole. She notices when people are wearing her socks and although doesn’t want to admit it, believes she can deceiver the nature of a person by the colour of their socks.
Maintenance of matching socks is difficult, especially at college where things are lost in the dryer, in the shared dorm room or after a particularly dark Saturday night. Hey, she could add another collegiate medal to her collection as the owner of highest number of items that have almost fallen victim to washing machine. Organisation, responsibility and attention to detail; Matching socks resemble someone who has truly got their shit together. She has never worn matching socks.
The box is filled with pairs of green and purple sports socks, black and white trainer socks and one awkward pairing of one knee high Christmas sock and one Halloween ankle sock. The Christmas one she lost during a Christmas party at a barn thirty minutes off campus. She can't exactly remember why she took just one sock off but at the time she recalls there being a valid reason. The black trainer sock is her lucky racing sock. She has worn it for every race since she won nationals aged thirteen. She's had some pretty bad races since then but she's superstitious and it comforts her.
The box is her secret place of dysfunction, her secret place where she can stops focusing on the irrelevant small details that often ruminate and germinate in her brain. The dysfunction is controllable; an ironic reminder that the rest of her life isn’t. Unlike her notes, the colours do not match. Unlike her hierarchy-enforcing backpack, she doesn’t feel she has anything to prove. The dis-order she sees in the box everyday reminds her that a little bit of dysfunction does not mean she is destined for a dysfunctional life. The odd socks remind her of the lack of order and how it makes her blossom.
We asked our reading witches to submit their sock chronicles inspired by Sophia's story. This is the magic that ensued.