The Science of Laundry, Part I

It has been well documented to the point of being a cliché that when a person has the grave misfortune of losing a sock in the laundry that if he or she dons the remaining sock invariably there is a sensation on the other foot of the missing sock being present.

This is, of course, known as the Phantom Sock Phenomenon (PSP). What is less well-known than the PSP is how entanglement or, as Einstein put it, “spooky action at a distance,” enters into the Lost Sock Paradox (LSP).

This was first noted as is the case with most great breakthroughs in science by chance. We do not know the name of the first person to experience this. Likely he or she was taken for a witch and burned at the stake almost as soon as reporting the findings to contemporaries.

Since that time, however, the species has thankfully advanced into a more enlightened attitude towards matters of physics, psychology, fashion, and laundry. The findings have been successfully duplicated on countless occasions.

It only remains for some enterprising research effort to take this to the next level and publish once and for all the facts, as I shall attempt in a thought experiment to lay as bare as the foot lacking the errant sock.

Imagine the person who finds much to his or her dismay that a sock is missing from the laundry. Consider that in a state of panic or resignation, he or she might chance to put on the lone, remaining sock as an act of mourning.

Now, imagine if you will that simultaneously another person near or far happens to find the missing sock. Without reflection, it immediately occurs to anyone in such a circumstance that someone has lost this sock.

In a random moment of sympathetic solidarity, imagine that person decides almost by compulsion to put that sock on. Invariably, he or she will put that sock on the opposite foot of the one the owner has likewise put on the other sock.

There are some theories about further sympathetic entanglements with socks. Some theoreticians go so far as to claim the two persons can experience each other’s state of mind while wearing the socks.

A great epic has yet to be written about these phenomena. Perhaps it will happen everywhere all at once like other things have, including existence itself: Sort of a Big Bang with socks, or maybe a Sock It to Me.