We remind you as a public service announcement that May 9 is National Lost Sock Memorial Day and for that the Dirty Sock Cocktail is an appropriate drink. The day recognizes all the socks that are no longer with us and encourages us to let go of the inexplicably single socks dwelling in our dresser drawers. Unless, of course, you have fully embraced the non-matching sock aesthetic, which would cause us to question your sartorial choices.
It wasn’t easy finding a drink appropriate to mourning lost socks, so stick with us here and we’ll explain.
National Lost Sock Memorial Day
Few mysteries in the history of mankind are as perplexing as that of the missing sock. No matter how many times you may count and confirm they’re all present before doing laundry, scientists have been unable to determine why, on random occasions, they don’t all make it out of the dryer alive. Did a sock simply vaporize? Did it dissolve into millions of tiny fibers now caught in the lint screen? Nobody knows.
Socks have gone missing since they were invented in ancient Greece around the 8th century B.C. Never as a pair, only one at a time. We’ve all experienced it, the sinking feeling when folding laundry and noting that some sock no longer has a partner. They end up in a pile of lonely, orphaned socks in the corner of a drawer. Other than the colorblind, few of us have taken it upon ourselves to embrace and popularize the unmatched sock aesthetic in our daily wardrobe, even if it does seem like appropriate garb when enjoying the Finnish Long Drink.
Samsung conducted a study in 2016 to study the phenomenon as they prepared to launch a new washing machine. They concluded that in the U.K. a total of 84 million socks go missing every month. That’s an average of 1.3 socks per person. Assuming that an average person lives to the age of 81 that adds up to about 1,264 socks over a lifetime. Strangely enough, more socks tend to be lost when men do the laundry, and colored socks are more likely than white and patterned socks to go missing.
It’s a dire situation; we don’t believe the British are alone in their alarming sock statistics. No relief is in sight as a means to cure the world of missing socks has not been found.
The Dirty Sock Cocktail
It’s alarming, but physicists are probably closer to understanding dark matter than finding an answer to the sock question. For all we know the late Stephen Hawking might have been right when he speculated that lost socks fell victim to spontaneously created black holes.
We considered honoring professor Hawking’s theory as he was usually right and it seems plausible to us. But alas, there is no good black hole or wormhole cocktail. In fact, there aren’t a lot of cocktails related to socks at all. We briefly considered the Japanese Slipper cocktail. Such slipper would obviate the need for socks, but you would have to locate the dusty bottle of Midori liqueur you have sitting around from the ‘90s.
Luckily, we were able to identify the Dirty Sock cocktail. It’s appropriate, because about all a lone sock is good for is acting as a cleaning rag or making a sock puppet. The drink’s origin is entirely unclear, nobody seems to know where it came from, but it’s at least dead simple. Nothing in it but Scotch Whisky and pineapple juice.
Dirty Sock Cocktail
Equipment
- Old Fashioned Glass
Ingredients
- 1½ oz Scotch Whisky Just use an inexpensive blended Scotch here. Save your fancy bottles for sipping neat.
- 1½ oz pineapple Juice
Instructions
- Add ice to glass.
- Add Scotch whisky and pineapple juice.
- Stir with finger or other utensil of choice.
- Drink.
- Dispose of single socks hidden in your dresser drawer or make sock puppets.
