I’m a tube sock guy. A proud tube sock guy. A relentless proponent of the tube sock. Maybe I’m just somewhat nostalgically stuck in the tube sock-laden era of my youth, the 1980s, but I think my abiding love for the tube sock goes far beyond that. Tube socks are true, full and honest footunderwear (footwear we wear under our footouterwear, shoes). The modern little socks that barely cover the entire foot, and have given up on even attempting to cover the ankle and lower leg, they’re nothing but wanna-be’s, incomplete pretend socks, posers. Screw them and the shoe they rode in on.
I’ve watched the American sock slowly but steadily shrink from its glorious height of crowning socktastic achievement with the ‘80s colored-stripe tube sock. First, they ditched their stripes. It’s said that a tiger cannot change its stripes, but Hanes is no tiger. Then, the Sock Industrial Complex began downsizing, first with what they called “ankle socks,” losing a good foot to a foot-and-a-half of total sock area, making them unable to be pulled up past just above the ankle. The sock masters tried to convince all of us (they condescendingly call the sock wearing public “sock puppets”) to accept this small shift in lower leg reality.
Some of us bucked the trend (and still proudly do), but most people, stupidly more concerned with nonsense like career advancement and feeding their families, didn’t even notice, much less care. These pretend-sock-lovers, these Sunday sock people, drowned out we lucky few, we band of brothers, with their propaganda about staving off carpal tunnel syndrome for a few years for the 6-year-old Cambodian kids who sew our, now greatly diminished, socks. (Without their standard pre-teen arthritis, how are our toddler sockistas going to feel pride in their child labor?)
Then, once we were used to ankling for a few years, the greedy, soulless sock purveyors pulled another fast one on us. They dropped even the pretense of trying to cover the ankle, leading us disastrously toward the foot snuggie socks that only, and just barely, cover the foot. You can barely even see these little wanna-be socks. They are the anti-tubers. And to them, I say, “Nay! We shall not accept your pittance masquerading as a proper sock. We shall fight until you have chopped off all of our legs, and even then we shall yell unflattering things about your mothers, while we bleed to death on the moist ground.”
Tube socks are the only real socks. We must not forget this, for what will they come for next? They’ve already convinced 98% of American women that their thin, nearly-pointless footies are still worthy of the once-revered title of Sock. Not many of us are holding the line for the Tube Sock. It’s just me, those defiant two percent of women, a few homeless dudes, and perhaps Cindy Lauper, who even cares enough to stand up for the beleaguered tube sock.
Tube on, my friends. Tube on.
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