“White Socks, They Never Get Dirty”

When I was in college, my freshman year roommate Mary taught me this song:

WHITE SOCKS they never get dirty
the longer you wear them the stiffer they get
SOMETIMES I think of the laundry but something inside me says
“Don’t send them yet!”

This is the sort of tuneless ditty that is best sung in loud, rousing tones with the greatest of enthusiasm and conviction after a few beers. It is also the ditty that went through my mind last night as I saw, much to the horror of Jewish mothers everywhere, that I was IN THE HOSPITAL WITH FILTHY WHITE SOCKS ON.

Unwell as I was, I made sure to change my underwear and sweater before I drove myself over. I spritzed a bit of Eau de Merveilles behind my ears. I brushed my teeth. I washed my face. I put on thick white gym socks and wrapped myself in a cozy chenille throw in a gay garnet color (it’s always so bloody chilly in the ER, and they don’t hesitate to leave you languishing on the beds dressed in nothing but a paper towel) and figured I was all ready for my little Saturday night date with our health care system.

Imagine my horror when the doctor rolled me onto my side to ultrasound my gallbladder and I saw that the bottom of my gym socks was FILTHY BLACK. I gasped. He said, “Am I hurting you?” No, no, I assured him, and gestured feebly toward the television set, where the Cleveland Indians were doing bad things to my Red Sox. To honor both of my dead grandmothers (one Jewish and one Russian Orthodox, but theologically united both here and in the afterlife, I have no doubt, in their commitment to wearing clean underclothes in the hospital), I clasped my feet together like a mermaid and hoped the doctor would not notice my degenerate soles.

But as they say, dear readers, better a degenerate sole than a degenerate soul. I also brought my tiny Bible to the hospital with me and, for perhaps the first time, really got down with the Gospel of John.

So our story has a happy ending. My health will be fine soon, I have no doubt, my socks are in the laundry, and I have learned my lesson: despite our rousing ditty quoted above, white socks do get dirty. Oh, and in case you were wondering, it is definitely a PeaceBang Fashion Non-Non to do ministry work in sandals and white socks, no matter how clean those suckers are.