A Love Story, about Socks

I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell the story, and you're going to comment and tell me what you think the theme is. We wanna-be-teacher types believe that to engage an audience, you have to have some interactive part of the program. You read the story, comment about the theme, and I get to pick the winner. The winner gets a prize. The prize is a $1.29 Amazon gift card (because you know I hate Itunes) and a bottle of the wine from Summer Wine Groove #2, which I will post tomorrow. I will send it to the winner's address. If nobody comments, either because nobody is reading or because you are all Chickenshit-Scaredy-Cats, I will reveal what I believe the theme to be in my next post. I know we all remember that a theme is a statement, ideally a complete, single sentence, that is revealed by the events of a story. I make up stories like this, usually fictional, starring moi, for my students to teach theme, and other stuff. They love it. They eat this shit up! I hope you will, too.

This is a story about two women. It may or may not be true. It may be some variation of the truth, or a combination of different truths, like most things are. It is up to you to figure out if truth is important here. I'm going to tell the story in the first person, and it's up to you to figure out if and why that matters, how it impacts the story's truthfulness, either in reality or imagination, and what imaginative truth even is.

At this point I would like to point out that I am blogging in the presence of my son, who is three, by myself, and getting him to play independently. Please hold your applause. More on that (independent play struggles) later. . .

Enough build up. Here's the damn story.

Once upon a time, when I was younger and childless, I was very much in love with this girl. She traveled a lot for her job, and during this particular month, she was working in Paris. We'd recently had a ceremony, though it wasn't legal, either according to the Jews or the state, but to us it was a Big Deal. We were not wealthy, since we were newlyweds, and so I felt very lucky when my boss's wife offered to let me use his frequent flier miles to come and spend time in Paris with her after her work there was done. I took some vacation time and booked a flight. I can't remember if this was our first time in Paris together--it may have been the second. I'm dreadful at remembering these kinds of details, but it doesn't mean that I don't care.

I remember other details--a winter scene in a Starbucks in Paris on one trip--it was snowing; my head was in her lap; I think I slept. The Parisians were too busy being Parisian to notice the love exploding off of us, igniting everything in flames. "Oh, what eez zat?" they wondered in their Parisian accents, "A fire? How inconvenient! Zees ugleee, fat Americans!" Anyway.

The morning of my flight to see my new wife, I took a lot of time getting dressed. I wanted to be comfortable and adorable and just the way she remembered me. I'd missed her unbearably. When I got to the airport, the flight was delayed three times, then canceled. I couldn't get onto another one until the next day because of frequent flier mile restrictions. I talked to my wife several times, and was frustrated to have lost the day, with her, in Paris, but mostly, to not have her in my presence for another Grueling Eternity.

Somehow, I remained in good spirits because of my socks. I still haven't decided if it was the socks or if they were just the thing I latched onto to retain my optimism, but I recall telling my wife that it was the socks. They were really soft, and it felt like I had pillows around my feet. They made me easy-going, and I was the favorite among the airline staff. (This wasn't hard, since everyone else was shrieking at them.) They offered a hotel, even though I lived a short metro ride away. They grinned at me. They flirted. They tried to override restrictions for me, or at least they said they did. It was not so bad.

Eventually I got to Paris, and my wife and I had a fantastic time. There was some drama with her French ex-girlfriend, but there was also a really big shower, unheard of in Paris, but then again that may have been the other trip. Whatever the case, I can still call up how the socks felt, and I can recreate how they allowed me to be patient, funny, and content in the face of Enormous Disappointment And Longing. I know what you're thinking. You think, "Well, what other choice did you have?" I could have been like every other person there, who was throwing An Absolute Fit.

I still have the socks. They've held up well, since I have like 57093475209 pairs of socks, and I only wear them on really important days, or when I'm indulging myself. Of course they don't make them anymore, but no matter. They're a part of my sense-memory. They aren't just lucky socks. They're socks which create an aspect of myself. I was in my early 30s when this happened, and I've since learned the brain doesn't fully mature until about 35. Now I see the socks as what happened to be there when my mind coalesced. And I see my contentment at the flight cancellation as one of the acts of everyday heroism regular people get to feel good about until they are truly challenged. It was practice, for an actual bad day.

So, there is the story. Themes?