He's a "Keeper"

I saw it again last night. There it was, at the bottom of a stack of clear plastic storage bins. I hadn't noticed it for a very long time, as its contents are never needed. Yet we must hang on to it "just in case." My husband, you see, is a "keeper." He's a keeper in many senses of the word...in terms of himself being one quite worth hanging onto as well as in terms of being one who thinks nearly everything on God's green earth is worth hanging onto. *Sigh*

Last night when Dear Husband was rummaging through the closet for a jacket and tie, something rarely required for his work anymore, my attention was brought to it again. I wouldn't have noticed it if Husband had not quizzed me as to where I had stashed his tie collection, as it has become a part of the routine scenery in our large walk-in bedroom closet. I guess, with time, I somehow managed to become desensitized to it. I scanned the length of the wall and the contents of the clear plastic storage bins, thinking to myself that I had not put Husbans's ties in one of these bins, and that's when my eyes registered the long forgotten one that lies dormant in wait of being needed again someday. The one we must keep "just in case."

"Well..." I began with a twinge of smart-ass in my tone, "you may not be able to locate a tie, but surely the circumstances call for a little something out of your extensive tube sock collection!" Husband gave me the you're-being-a-smart-ass look, and I responded that I felt a blog post coming on.

I remember a couple years ago when I cleaned and reorganized the drawers of our bedroom dresser, and I began pulling socks out of one of Husband's drawers. I could not believe the sheer mass of them. There were hideous pairs of funky dress socks from the 80's, which I labeled "pimp socks" as I thought they would go quite well with the "pimp shoes" (you know the ones...those slim style slip ons with the little tassels that bounce around at the toes) that I managed to extricate from my husband's wardrobe during the first year of our marriage. He must have been hiding the "pimp socks" under his pillow for the past decade, because I do not know how they survived the next several years including a CROSS COUNTRY MOVE for crying out loud!

As I sat buried in a massive sock drift, I made quick survey of the situation. Without further adieu, I relegated the "pimp socks" to the trash, but I paused on the tube socks. At first the pause was for nothing more but to consider what, in the name of all that is good and holy, could lead to a person having a tube sock collection of this magnitude! Then I began to sort them into piles and categories. I think I was in shock and grasping at how to make sense of it all. I threw out the ones with holes in the heels (despite what Husband might think, I could not think of a time that they could possibly be needed one day). There was a pile of extra heavy winter tube socks, the kind that is super thick and gray with the neon red band at the top, a pile of white ones (the ones with the stains got tossed), a pile of not as heavy gray ones without neon red bands at the top, a pile of heavy black ones with rubber grippers on the bottoms (don't ask), and a pile of assorted colored ones that wouldn't fit in any better category.

Now that I had them in piles, I thought about what I would do if left to my own: I would save about two or three pairs and banish the rest from my home. After all, I'm not an avid tube sock wearer. Neither is my husband, despite his "it-might-come-in-handy" outlook. And since neither of us are avid tube sock wearers, I found myself stuck again in the answerless question of how it had come to this. Then, in an effort to compromise with my keeper of a husband, I found a large plastic storage bin and saved in it all the tube socks in new or nearly new condition. You just never know when you might have trouble finding a tie and decide that a tube sock will do.