What's mine is mine...

If you are thinking of getting my sons a Christmas gift and are wondering what to get them, let me make a suggestion.  Socks.  Many, many socks.  They may not be all that thrilled with them but sometimes sensible gifts don't elicit a lot of excitement.  They'll get over it.

Allow me to back up a bit.  Simply put, I'm raising sock thieves.  For reasons known only to God, my sons go through an inordinate number of socks.  Not only do they disappear at an alarming rate, the ones that do make it back from the laundry room after being washed and dried are somehow still "crunchy"....I don't ask and you shouldn't either.  

In our house, everyone wears white gym socks, for the most part.  The boys like the "no see" socks and I like ankle socks.  The young lads aren't quite so discriminating once their socks have mysteriously disappeared.  Suddenly my ankle socks are just fine, thank you very much.  Finally I had enough!  I went out and bought myself a perfect lovely (and girly) package of ankle socks...complete with pink toes and heels.  Surely my teenage sons wouldn't dare pilfer my pink and white socks....would they??  I got my answer one night as we sat around watching TV.  Everyone was in comfy clothes, feet up on ottomans (why isn' the plural of that ottomen?).  I looked down and what to my wondering eyes should appear...but my socks on Kyle's feet!  The nerve!!  I shared my indignation with him and he had no shame. With eyes staring out of his freckly face, he simply said, "I couldn't find any of mine."  Alrighty then.  The next time I was at my local WalMart, I picked up yet another package of "girl" socks.  These had gray on them with either a baby blue or pink stripe around the top.  But knowing what I know, I knew further action needed to be taken.  I brought them into my room, and not only did I put them in their drawer, I covered them up with other random mismatched, old, stretched out socks!  Yup, my socks are in the witness protection program.  And if this idea doesn't work, I have just one last desperate option:  striped knee socks.