While folding laundry last week I came up one sock short.

Again.

So I retraced my steps. Felt around the base of the washing machine agitator. Checked the dryer. Went over every step of the way between the bedroom and the basement. No trace of the missing sock.

Having learned my lesson from the previous occasion when a sock went missing, I pulled out the stack of folded T-shirts and thoroughly searched to make sure there was no errant sock hidden inside the folds. I grabbed the polo shirts that I had just placed on hangers and gave them the once over. In short I went through every other piece of clothing that had shared the dryer with those socks, but none of them were concealing the missing sock.

Oh, well, I thought. It has to be somewhere. It’ll show up one of these days.

And I placed the unmated sock next to the folded ones, so I’d be sure to remember it when its missing brother showed up.

The days went by until finally, on the seventh day, I grabbed a pair of socks and what do I find?

It wasn’t a pair but a trio!

Somehow I had folded three socks together rather than two. How I managed to do that, I don’t know. That was a new one.

I’ll have to remember that trick the next time a sock goes missing.