Origin of Socks

2009-08-11

"Daddy," the little girl asked, "where do the socks come from?"

Her father, who was tucking her into bed, answered, "Well, socks came from Europe a long time ago. Back then Europe was a cold place all covered with forests and snow."

"There were these guys going out into the forest to find food. They were hunting the Northern European Sock Monkey, because they had monkeys in Europe back then. Anyway, one night while they sat around their campfire eating Sock Monkey, one of the guys accidentally slipped his foot into the skin of one of the monkeys. 'Hey,' he thought, 'this is kind of warm and comfortable.' So, he put another Sock Monkey skin on his other foot."

"Before too long, word got around that this felt pretty good, so the Europeans almost completely wiped out the Sock Monkey population of the world just to keep their feet toasty. That was sad for the monkeys and for the Europeans because with no more monkeys, they didn't have anything left to put on their feet. Finally, someone figured out that you could knit a bunch of wool together and make a fake monkey skin to keep your feet warm. That's why we wear socks."

"No, Daddy," the girl said as she pointed to the television. "I meant where did those socks come from?"

The daddy looked and said, "That's a mystery that will probably be gone by the time you wake up in the morning."

"Mommy says they came from your drinking buddies."

"I think your mommy was just being silly. None of my buddies know how to knit wool into socks. Now go to sleep."