Steve's Socks

When I was second grade, my best friend Steve bragged to the boys in the class that he never changed his socks.

Never.

"You mean your mother doesn’t make you?"

"Nah."

Three or four of the boys in our hallway huddle exploded with, "!Huh-uhh!"

(In case you don’t know, "!Huh-uhh!" was absolutely the strongest challenge that could be issued to any claim. It was expressed like a sarcastic chuckle projected gutturally in two separate syllables, the first of which was explosively accented, and a little higher in tone than the second. To every eight year old boy, it meant "no way" or "liar liar pants on fire." Them’s fightin’ words.)

In short, no one believed him, and being a budding story teller Steve was forced to expand the claim to include "Oh yeah, well, I never even take them off!"

As a show of proof, he removed his black, high topped tennis shoe (black tennis shoes don’t get dirty, as every Mom knows) to reveal a disgustingly dingy, grayish tube sock that was dirty enough to have been a week on foot, indisputable evidence of Steve's claim for sure. We were satisfied beyond any doubt with his veracity and amazed by his dazzling display of independence. Steve basked in the glow of his elevated esteem.

Now, you might ask why Steve never removed his socks, or why the rest of us would have been impressed by that fact, but then, you’d be inquiring into the mind of an eight year old boy. Who knows. Steve probably didn’t know. We didn’t either. We were eight and we were boys, and those two facts are explanation enough.

Anyway, a few days later when I was at Steve's house for a back yard camp out, Steve’s mother asked me pointedly in front of him in what could only have been an effort to shame him into changing socks, "You change your socks every day, don't you?"

She was picking up my socks from the floor of the tent to wash that very night and at the same time, cautiously eyeing Steve's shoeless feet poking out of his sleeping bag.

Steve was immersed in drawing pictures in the lantern light. World War I biplanes shooting at each other while dogfighting above French soldiers in trenches with sandbags and machine guns. Each time he drew a part of the ongoing battle he made the appropriate gun or airplane noise. So distracted was he by his diversion, he didn’t notice as his mother made one silent, leopard-like spring that brought her close enough to the object of her attention so that in an instant, she was able to grab his socks by the toes and yank them clean off his feet. Well, maybe not clean, but smack dab. Anyway, pleased with her small victory, she yowlled with delight as he complained, "Mo–ooommm, you messed up my picture."

She chanted rhythmically, "Oh. . .yeah. . . oh . . . yeah, we're washin' these tonight!"

Then, as part of a personal victory dance she'd clearly performed before, she held the dirty socks over her head by the tube section. They didn't flop around or drape gently as mine did while she jigged and chanted. No, they were stiff as boards. Good grief, she actually beat out a rhythm on the table with them as made her exit.

All the while, Steve remained bothered, but silent (except for explosions and machine gun noises) and self-satisfied in his artwork . His point had been made. He never removed his socks. Never. Now, I was eye-witness to that fact and reinforced his esteem-enhancing claim by repeating the events of that evening to the hallway huddle each time they insisted, "tell the one about Steve's socks again."

And I did. Every time.