Euclidean Socks

My wife asked me last Saturday what I was going write my Thursday column about this week.

I had a ready answer. “Socks,” I said. “Like the Euclidean axiom about parallel lines, it only looks like they never match.”

Of course, the plastic-wrapped sacks of socks I got from my mother every Christmas always matched. No problem. They were all white and the same size, year after year. I had boxes full of them. But after she got to be up around 90 she started sending gift cards and I had to start buying my own socks and they never matched after I got them out of the washer and dryer. But it was only because they had different sizes and colors and tattoo-like designs.

I started spending too much time looking for socks that matched.

Then I remembered the daring 18^th century German mathematicians, led by Leibniz and Gauss and their students like Dirichlet and Riemann, who had the hutzpah to challenge Euclid. “It only looks like parallel lines never meet,” they said. Einstein eventually proved them right. Who was I to contest with these great minds?

One of the challenges of extending the family is the proliferation of birthdays. “What should we get the nephew?” my wife asks.

I always say the same thing. Socks. Socks of many different colors and let the next generation figure it out for themselves.