CAUGHT ON THE WRONG FOOT

CAUGHT ON THE WRONG FOOT

You can distinguish the tick of a pendulum from its tock

But can you distinguish a left sock from a right sock?

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Mismatched socks are alright, I suppose, even proudly worn nowadays, given the current fashion trends rippling thru the footwear segment, but socks caught on the wrong feet are something else. 

Let me explain. A confusing thing about a sock, any sock, is its orientation, that is to say, which foot it is knitted to go on. I mean to say, when they make a pair of socks, do they just make two of the same thing or do they make one each of left and right? If you haven't thought about it, just think about it. Pick up a sock and look at it dispassionately from top to toe. What do you see? You see a length of tubular knitted fabric, open at one end, closed at the other, and bent at close to right angles in the middle. So far so good. Now multiply it by two and what do you have? No, no, it doesn't give you your age. You have a pair of socks. But do you see any clue as to their orientation? None. Do you see any sign telling you which one is meant to adorn the left foot and which one the right? Not a one. Any one could be either. Or neither, or both. 

I have seen many a punctual office-goer (I would include myself but then I have never seen myself, if you know what I mean), getting ready for the morning dash to work, reduced to tears just trying to decide whether he should insert his left foot or his right into the blessed sock he is holding in his hands without committing a foot fault.

It is time to take matters into your own hands. Whenever you go out to the sock store (you could call it a "sock kadai" but if you speak Tamil, don't) and buy a pair of socks, make sure to identify the left and the right and mark them LEFT and RIGHT with indelible (not inedible) ink while they are still new. If you are not sure which language to use, go for colour coding, but remember to use red for left and green for right, like they do for the port and starboard navigation lights of oceangoing vessels and airliners. You may use blue and yellow if you wish to be different and don't wish to follow international conventions. Of course, if you are colour blind, it is best to use white ink, except when the socks are themselves white, in which case it is advisable to go for black. 

Just imagine stepping out with your left and right socks interchanged! You wouldn't be able to walk properly and your feet would be constantly getting in the way of one another, causing much entanglement. Or leading away from one another, resulting in what my good friend from Patna would call "bahut lar-bar".

On an aside, we have a tenant at one of our organisation's properties who asked me at the very start of his tenancy to remove all low level footstools from the premises. A gangling sort of a man, he told me that he suffered from a problem of wayward feet and there had been quite a few occasions when he had had painful collisions with low lying furniture in his path. Thinking about it now, I wonder if he habitually wore his socks wrong.

Remember, socks are not like pendulums that go tick tock. It is easy to distinguish between a pendulum's tick from its tock, but it is quite another thing to differentiate a left sock from a right sock.

- © Shiva Kumar, 21 April 2020