You can learn a lot from the contents of a man's sock drawer

One rainy day this summer, I sorted my sock drawer. I do this when it gets so full I can hardly close it. Pairing down, pun intended, was overdue.

I collect socks like some men of previous generations collected neckties. As a matter of principle, I always buy them on sale. At Christmas, I sometimes wear a green one with a red one. At funerals, I often, but not always, wear black. Generally, I prefer color.

Wearing bright colors and zigzaggy designs is my way of suggesting I’m not as boring as I look. In another dimension, I race cars at Les Mans. The likes of Carl Jung might enjoy psychoanalyzing my shadowed intentions. If he were to ask, I’d venture that a pair of bold socks hints that there’s a part of me that is cool, even if most of me is not. Socks do what the rest of me is too shy to do: stand out.

I piled my collection on our bed and separated them into categories. Solid-colored socks. Athletic socks. University of Illinois socks because I recently lived within walking distance of campus. And 60 pairs of crazy socks that defy category.

The Andy Warhol socks don’t look like Andy Warhol unless I take off my shoes. The Salvador Dalí image of his The Disintegration of Persistence of Memory would work better as a T-shirt — or, a canvas at a museum. The “Cat Daddy” socks, featuring a bearded man holding numerous cats, are creepy. But they’re crazy socks. They live up to their name.

Sure, I have tasteful argyles, subtle polka dots, plain solids, colored stripes (including an elegant Italian pair I scored half-off at Benjamin’s in Morganton), and other common patterns that don’t rock the boat. But I prefer zany.

It’s not like I’m wearing a neon green suit or a tattoo of flowers and skulls running up my arm. They’re socks. My pants mostly cover them up. People only get a glance. They are experiments in whimsy, not billboards. Often liturgical — Advent purple, Pentecost red, Epiphany green — they are ephemera for the feet.

Because they know I’m a connoisseur, friends often give me socks.

A friend returned from the beach with a bright yellow pair covered with chocolate moon pies. Another gave me a pair from the San Diego Zoo replete with tree frogs. Frogs and moon pies go well with a conservative black suit. Another friend gave me a pair of CSX railroad socks. When I wear them, I feel like a savvy conductor crisscrossing the country. I have Santa socks, reindeer socks, socks emblazoned with pink flamingos, red crabs, Scrabble game tiles, acoustic guitars, elk, birds, and designs that defy explanation.

At Christmas, we stuff our boys’ stockings with socks. Socks are immensely practical whether covered in Van Gogh sunflowers or not. I’m contemplating ordering each of our grown sons a pair that says, “Saving the world one dad joke at a time.” They love hating my sense of humor.

But there’s a serious side to socks. I have socks whose sales support breast cancer research and clean water projects around the world. Socks don’t have a conscience, but some sock companies do.

A retired friend served an impoverished congregation in a village in Brazil. He often explained to people in the United States that we are richer than we imagine. To illustrate his point, he challenged us to examine our closets and count our shoes. Congregants in his Brazilian church had only one pair. They didn’t have the luxury of a pair of shoes for work in the soggy fields and a Friday night pair for dancing. They had no beach shoes, no house slippers, no dress shoes, no heels, no galoshes, and no running, walking, or tennis shoes. Just one pair.

I went home and counted eight, which included a few old pairs for yard work. But still. Eight.

When I sorted my socks this summer, I tallied 95 pairs and one stray single.

While my bank account isn’t as stuffed as my sock drawer, I am wealthy compared to much of the world. This drawer of screwball socks nudges me to ask if I’m being as careful a steward of my resources as I could be.

How many socks does one man need?

Beyond convicting me of my abundance and possible greed (who knew a sock drawer could do that?), I suppose my sock drawer is a deeper metaphor for my life. Maybe there’s a brighter side of me I keep hidden. Maybe I like variety in small doses. Maybe I value practical things, or I’m seldom sure of my footing. Mr. Jung could help me figure out these existential possibilities.

Whatever their deeper meanings, socks can be fun. These flashes of color hidden down around my ankles make me feel enigmatic like a James Bond packing heat or Maxwell Smart equipped with a spy camera in my ink pen and poison darts in the heel of my shoe. These dated cultural references peg me, rightly, as a has-been.

In fact, I’m a never-was. I’m as boring as I look from my upper calves up.

But, at least, I feel a spring in my step in a pair of bright socks. When I’m wearing the comfortable maroon socks I wore at my son’s wedding, I feel happily connected to him and that festive day. They matched his wedding suit, in which he looked debonaire. My ankles feel great when I wear those socks, and that good feeling rises all the way up, past my knees, to my smile.