The Inherent Sock Stealer 

It was a job handed down from father to son from time immortal, well at least since socks had been invented that is. His father was renowned as one of the best of his generation and although Ernie had quite a following in the sock stealing circle he was hardly front page news. There was a greater selection of socks nowadays so the job had become a lot easier, basically because it was now so easy to snatch the odd sock.

In his fathers day you had to be a lot pickier, checking length, age and even sometimes left and right foot to destroy a pair. Although the originality of the designs on the socks had made it a bit more colourful as an occupation the job was losing its mystique and glamour. They were even saying that anyone could do it, which was probably the biggest put down in any job. Ernie realised that this was very nearly true in a way but the specialist sock stealer would always come up with something original to keep a bit of spice in the job.

Although one of the greatest pleasures was watching the victims try to find a pair when looking through their sock drawer a close second was the way they could not understand how the missing sock had vanished. It was all very well stealing from the laundry basket but highly unoriginal, I mean just about everyone expects their socks to stray between the laundry basket and the tumble dryer, what makes it such a wonderful job is when they lose them unexpectedly.

Now Ernie’s favourite was stealing two different socks from two different pairs that had already been sorted and wrapped together in the sock drawer, then wrapping the two remaining socks together. Doing this with similar socks was fun but with two completely different socks it was hilarious. The faces as the wounded prey pulls out the supposed pair and finds two entirely different socks is just wonderful. Another speciality which really takes an expert is to swap a sock when someone is actually wearing it, one minute your quarry has a nice pair of blue socks on his feet and next time he looks one sock is blue and the other red, this is the highpoint of any sock stealers career, especially if he manages it in the evening. The reason for swapping them as late as possible is because it makes your poor unwitting soul believe he has been walking round all day in an odd pair of socks, watching the embarrassed hue come to his face makes all the run of the mill sock snaffling worth while.