THE RELUCTANT SOCK

Dear DocFlinkey,

I have been doing reasonably well without your help recently, but something has come up that I just can't ignore.

I have this really annoying sock. It hates being washed. May I add that all of my other clothes are scrupulous about being cleaned, and are always itching to be placed in the washing machine. In fact, I can almost smell them coo with delight as I place them tenderly in the machine each month.

But allow me to return to the matter at hand. I place my errant sock in the dirty clothes basket with all of the other dirty clothes, but somehow, it never makes it to the washing machine. After thinking about its behaviour for some time, I drew the following conclusions.

The errant sock creeps out of the basket when I am not looking. It then hides itself somewhere in the house, and returns to my clean clothes drawer during the night while I am asleep. This, of course, is most undesirable, as it means that I wear it again and again, thinking it is clean, when in fact, it is covered in the filth and general residue from my feet.

I needn't mention what a disastrous impact all of this is having on my social life. Please, please, please, Dr Flinkey. You must help me. Once again I find myself with no-one else to turn to.

Devotedly yours,
Hognogger


Dear Hoggy,

(Thank you by the way for adding me to your webblog - my lawyers will in touch with you soon.)

Many intellectuals have the ability to think in linear fashion but are so busy thinking laterally they cannot see the obvious solution.

As with audio recording - you MUST FOLLOW THE SIGNAL to find the problem.

Let's follow the sock in a LINEAR fashion shall we?

Sock on foot - sock in basket - sock in drawer - sock on foot - sock in basket etc.

Study this line. What sort of line is it? If you answered cyclical you would be correct.

So - we must break the cycle of the sock.

It is so simple. Have you worked it out yet? Think, think, think. How do you break the cycle? How do you stop the sock from getting out of the basket and into the drawer?

CORRECT!

Put the drawer in the basket! When the sock crawls out of the basket and into the drawer where is he?

IN THE BASKET STILL!