The Softball Sock | Softball is For Girls

It occurred to me today, as I found a disgusting, crusty rolled up ball of a sock under a pillow on my daughters bed – that softball, and socks in general have made me made me lose my mind. Why? Because I sniffed it.

I actually sniffed it.

I don’t know, maybe to see if it was dirty or clean, or maybe because its been a few months since our travel ball season has been over and I am feeling nostalgic. Or maybe because its just a natural instinct to find some piece of clothing in a pile and immediately hold it up to my nose to see if it is dirty or clean, you know, like people do with a babies diaper. Hold their butts up in the air and sniff their diaper even though they can see the poop leaking from the side.

The thing is, the sock, even after months of festering under a pillow, smelled worse than a baby diaper.

So much so, that I contemplated throwing it away.

But THEN…. just as I was about to drop it in the trash can marked ‘safe to burn,’ I started worrying obsessively that maybe it was a very special orange sock and she was keeping it under her pillow for some very good reason that I didn’t know about, and if I were to throw it in the trash that she may possibly NEVER be able to hit again, or would never ever win another game, or may end up cursed somehow on the softball and would end up with the nickname E6 (because she’s a short stop and E stands for errors) and that it would be all my fault because I threw away a rancid, hard, orange, stinky, crusty sock that she had safely put under her pillow.

Or maybe that was the sock she was wearing the day that she had that knock off hit. I mean there had to be some reason, some logical reason why a young girl would keep a filthy sock under her pillow.

Or maybe…she just didn’t put it in the wash yet… because she knows I always nag her about leaving her softball socks in a crumpled up ball in the laundry basket, (You know just like inside out softball pants with the belts and sliders still in them which by the way after many years I now wash and dry just like they are because its just too damn difficult to get those belts out) and she didn’t want me complain about how much I hate sticking my hand inside them to turn them right side out before washing, and it was just such a disgusting sock that she too, didn’t want to put her hand inside it and she was hoping that given a little time the smell of her freshly washed sheets would rub off on the sock and it wouldn’t be so gross.

Or you know what….come to think of it, it could be that the match to this sock is the one that had a big huge gaping hole in the toe and caused her to pitch bad (like really bad) for an entire day and also messed up her fielding because she was soooo distracted and mad that I wouldn’t RUN off to the store to buy her new socks, even though I know (because you know, I KNOW EVERYTHING) that holey socks drive her crazy and I apparently ruined her entire day on the softball field. On purpose, too – (because I was obviously the one that didn’t notice the hole when SHE put those socks on at 5am, because I was too busy throwing ice on the case of hot waters that had been sitting in the cooler since last week)

So maybe rather than being irresponsible and disgusting – she was actually being thrifty and only slightly disgusting by putting it on her pillow – just saving this sock in a a safe place until another sock came along that she could match it up with, because apparently wearing two different colored and patterned socks to practice is a COOL THING these days.

Because YOU KNOW – it’s okay to mismatch socks as long as the socks are the SAME DARN LENGTH! But if the socks are not the same darn length, then that my friends is a D-E-A-L B-R-E-A-K-E-R……because no softball player in her right mind can go around with one socks that comes below the knee and the other coming above the knee and actually PLAY softball! No way!

And you see…this is why I am crazy. All this..all these thoughts, all these ruminations, stress, pressure and frustration over a disgusting sock, that I actually ended up accidentally using to wipe down my counters because I thought it was a towel on my shoulder while I was cleaning (because WHO would wear a softball sock on their shoulder) and then incidentally wiped across my face —only to instantly recognize that smell and realize with horror that I just allowed a dirty softball sock to touch the skin near my mouth. Gag! Sigh….