Sox

Arrrghh! Damn him, my mean bloggy friend has assigned me to write about socks (sox) this week. WTF? He is about as random as it gets. I think he is power hungry. He knows I will write on whatever topic he gives me because I am so compliant and willing to please.

The big surprise is I'm going to take an odd turn on the subject. You'd think I'd write about the warm apparel for you feet. I do love socks, and I have discovered that when you lead a nomadic life as I have the last 5 years, you collect socks. They don't take up much space, and they're easy gifts and souvenirs for people who want to give you something but know you don't have a lot of room for big things. There are some socks I am emotionally connected to and cannot throw away. Like my socks that say "40." Wow, they're 14 years old!

But when I heard the assignment, the first thing I thought of was a young man from college nicknamed "Sox." I didn't name him that. He got that in college before I showed up, but we barely knew his real name. He loved socks and always wore wild and crazy socks so the nickname stuck. To this day, I don't know if Sox ever graduated. He was, what I would call, an "Idea Man," always on the go, always coming up with some type of scheme, always planning something, leading something, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil. He was sorta cute, but he was so dynamic and charismatic, that we loved his stories and schemes. For instance, he hooked up everyone on my dorm wing with phones. Doesn't sound like a big deal? But this was 1976 when the phone company owned consumers' phones and the contract was between the phone company and the university so the fact that Sox somehow procured about 20-25 "extra" phones was quite the coup. I didn't know if he was a Business major or an Engineer major because he not only "found" the phones but also hooked them all up. Who did that back in he 70s? I never knew if I would place this skill under "doing good or evil" since it was, after all, illegal. There were enough phones in his dorm room that he never had to move, wherever he was, to answer a phone. That's a lot of phones!

Anyway, I look back and shake my head at our thinking back in the 70s. Sox and I went out once. Whether it was called a "date" or not, I'll never know, but I remember making out with him behind the dorms one night and was accused of being a "prick tease." Of course, I was a "prick tease," but that didn't give him the right to (a) call me that or (b) take advantage of that. He eventually stopped short of date rape, but I just marvel at how far we have come where "NO" actually means "NO" nowadays, but it didn't back in the 70s. I always saw Sox differently after that experience my freshman year. What an ass! I no longer saw him as the charismatic "Idea Man" that he billed himself to be. I just saw him as the egotistical prick he was. But whenever I hear the word "sox," I do think of Sox and the phones.

By the way, one of our favorite memories from college was the day Sox got arrested for the phone escapade. They even stationed cops below his dorm room in the event he would try to throw the multiple phones out the window, which he was starting to do before he was caught. He eventually had to open the door to the arresting officer. He was hauled off in handcuffs that day. What a doofus. Hard to imagine those days when guys still called girls "prick teases" and didn't know the meaning of the word "no." And hard to imagine getting arrested for hooking up phones on your own.

Wonder whatever happened to Sox. Last I heard, he was a "pre-owned" car salesman. You decide if that's using his power for good or evil???