Posted by
Ed Lilly on Friday, November 16, 2007 2:25:57 PM
As the father of 2 small kids, ages 6 (almost 7) and 3 (almost 4), I find myself amazed at how difficult it seems to be to find socks that fit their feet properly. My lovely wife thinks I'm insane for continually coming home with socks from different stores, trying to find ones that both fit their feet, and stay up on their calves but without being too restrictive.
We've picked up socks at Gymboree, Children's Place, Kids' Gap, Old Navy, Target and Walmart (sorry Mom & Dad). At this point, I've had the most luck recently with some Gold Toe product that Target is selling for girls. Even with our daughter's notoriously finicky foot behavior, where her socks have to go on JUST so, with no bumps or things she can feel anywhere, which generally entails a process of well over a minute to put on a single sock, somehow I've hit paydirt the past few times I've grabbed socks from Target that I figured were in the right color schemes, and would hopefully fit.
I have not had as much success with socks for our son, on the other hand. Much to my wife's dismay, I picked up a couple of different multi-sock packages from different stores in the past couple of months. The first pack was for boys ages 4-6. With a 4th birthday on the distant horizon of late February, I figured those would work fine. Looked a bit large as an initial fit, but I figured with washing and drying, they'd wind up pretty much right where he'd like them.
Wrong. They're still huge on him. So, after repeated complaints from my lovely wife about how ridiculous these socks were, I bought a different multi-pack. They're better, but seem rather tight through the ribbed portion of the sock that goes over the lower leg. (There's probably some sock terminology to specifically identify and describe this portion of the sock, but I don't know what it is. That will have to wait for another day.) I guess at this point they'll have to do.
One final oddity that I noticed with both of the multi-packs of socks for my son, as well as the pack of socks I bought for myself recently, is that the packages are re-sealable plastic bags. Like the kind of Ziploc bags you put leftovers in for storage. And this is even pointed out on the bags as a selling point. Why? Are people storing their socks in re-sealable plastic bags in a dresser drawer for some reason? Are they emptying out the socks and using the bag to store leftover food items? I don't understand this marketing gimmick. I would have bought the socks whether the bag was re-sealable or not. What is the benefit I am getting out of this?
Maybe I should go do an online search for "re-sealable sweat sock packages" and see if there is some deep answer to this mystery.