Socks: A Bildungsroman

I would have told you I had finally resumed work on Neopian Anomaly #20 (and it felt great), but after getting a glimpse of my classes this semester...yeah--no. I'm afraid I'm going to have to put that off for a little while longer. Sorry, guys. D:
But that's a very dreary note for a new journal, so I'm going to tell you a story if you're up to listen. ^_^ Good luck with classes, all!

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Everyone wears cute socks in elementary school. Penguins, polka dots, kittens. I loved my cute socks. I even had a pair of "anti-gravity socks" printed with aliens and spaceships that I claimed gave me the ability to jump higher. I was extremely upset when one sock eventually went missing.

In my middle school, though, cutesy socks were not all the rage, to put it mildly. People made fun of my flower-print pants in middle school, too, and by the time high school came around, I was trying to wear plain-print socks as much as possible. I grew to resent it when my parents bought me cute socks; it felt as though they were still catering to a little kid. I would still wear them, of course, but I always dreaded that people at school would take note of my socks.

But one year on my birthday, after my best friend had been to Ireland on vacation, she gave me a pair of leprechaun socks as a gift. I was a little incredulous at first--didn't she know me well enough by now? Seeing my questioning face, my friend told me, "I didn't know what to get you in Ireland. But then I saw these socks, and I thought, 'Hey, Lizzie likes crazy socks.' " And though it may sound sudden, I realized she was right. I loved my weird, unique socks. I loved that she associated me with weird, unique socks. It made me different, but my best friend liked that difference. She didn't think I was too old for cute socks; she thought the socks were part of me.

So throughout college, I have worn weird socks with pride. They've even started multiple interesting conversations. One of my roommates this year periodically looks down at my feet so she can see what kind of cool socks I've got on today.

I went to my first ever formal dance last semester, and at first I wore some green flower socks that matched my skirt. Then, thinking they weren't formal enough, I changed into regular white socks. And wouldn't you know it, my roommate noticed and was disappointed. I explained that the white ones were more dressy, to which she replied, "Yes, but the green ones were more you." Again, the friend was right. I changed socks.

This past Christmas, I got a grand total of eight new pairs of socks. And to be perfectly honest, they were the gifts I was most excited about.

So, I have weird socks, and I love them. They're crazy and varied, but then, so am I. Anyone who makes fun of me and my socks now I recognize to be someone whose opinions I don't really care that much about.

This has been a tale about socks and how they paralleled my growth into a young woman who loves to be herself.