(Slap your forehead!)

I pulled a pair white socks out of my drawer yesterday and they fit really well. That's big news because all my socks are just slightly too small for me.

Then I realized they must fit well because they're my son’s socks.

He’s in his early 30s, but still has some clothes in the house. Somehow, I got hold of a pair of his socks. Probably because our cats dragged them out of his old bedroom. They do stuff like that all the time.

But why did his socks fit me so well when we have about the same sized feet? And all of my socks are a bit too small.

(Slap your forehead!)

Then the light dawned. Because I’m 11 ½, I've have spent my entire life buying socks marked 9-12 and, because I'm notoriously tight, continued wearing them even after they had shrunk.

How stupid is that?

I’ve been wearing undersized socks my entire life -- self consciously pulling them up to keep bare skin from showing -- because I’ve followed the labels. Then they shrank. While my son, obviously, simply bought the next size up.

From now on I buy extra large instead of large.

But there's still the question: why on earth didn’t I do that before?

And what do I do with all my oh-so-wearable, slightly-too-small socks?