Socks … a lack of can be downright scary.

The alarm went off. I stumble into the kitchen to see if the dogs are waiting for their customary outing. They aren’t. I continue onto the bathroom. The door creaks, a dog-gone alarm. Eye roll and shake of the head. I backtrack through the house. 

A cool, crisp October morning. Barefoot just won’t do. Socks. I need socks. I slide the drawer open. It’s empty. Not even a single. I pull the other drawers. Nope, not there. Nope, not there. Panic starts to set in. Where are my socks? Who took my socks? 

My eyes flew open, and I sat straight up.

What is your weirdest or most bizarre nightmare or dream? 

That was, undoubtedly, mine. To reassure myself, I checked the sock drawer. Full of clean, ready-for-use socks. I pulled the other drawers, everything in its place. Nothing missing.

I’m past the age where I’m afraid of the dark. I’m actually at the point where whatever’s in the dark needs to be afraid of me. Among other items, I have a baseball bat and a big dog. If one doesn’t get you, the other one will. 

So why am I dreaming about my socks disappearing?

Sigmund Freud (1900) realized that dream content is derived from but not identical to real life; thus, he suggested that some transformation and connection must exist between these materials. He identified two types of dreams – manifest dream and latent dream – and believed that sources of dreams include stimuli from the external world, subjective experiences, organic stimuli within the body, and mental activities during sleep. 

Dream interpretation: After lengthy consideration, I’m blaming this dream on two factors. 

First, the loss of my weight scale. I asked my daughter to take it out of the bathroom during October, so I can try to break a morning ritual of weighing myself. Because of that, something very important to me is now gone. I still look for it every morning. Its absence still bothers me. I have a daily sense of dread, a definite fear of the unknown. That number, and a need to know it, haunts me. 

I’m a week into the month. Only time will tell if I make it until Nov. 1. I might cave. 

Second, that I’ve noticed some people do not wear socks. I cringe at the very thought of it. Socks are very important to the overall health of your feet. They absorb moisture, help protect your feet from the roughness of shoes, provide added cushioning and keep feet warm during cold days and nights.

Maybe my feet were cold that night? That just occurred to me. If my feet were cold, that dream was a manifestation of something I’d consider very scary: no socks and cold feet. 

Ding, ding, ding. I think we have an interpretation winner.

Standard reporter Lisa Hobbs can be reached at 473-2191.