Excerpt
Sock gnomes have been around for a long time. Their history dates back
nearly as far as humans’. It is true that they steal your socks, and although
you think that they take only one of a pair, leaving you with a useless
lone sock, they actually do on occasion steal the whole pair.
You see, sock gnomes wear your socks for clothes. They cut out a
neck hole and arm holes at the end of the sock and pull it over their
heads, kind of like a poncho. They have also been known to wear them
as robes. Sock gnomes wear only plain white socks with no color during
their childhood, or when they are gnomekins. This is why plain white
pairs disappear, though you may not notice. Now, with colorful socks,
ones with designs, pictures, and words, they only take one of these.
When a male sock gnome comes of age and has established himself
as a provider to the clan, he may go on the dangerous quest of stealing a
single colorful sock from the humans (you). The wearing of the sock lets
the females know that if they want to marry this male, they must pick his
matching sock.
You see, most of us humans hold on to the single sock left behind
for awhile, waiting and hoping that the matching sock from the pair will
turn up in the laundry some day, but it never does. When finally we
throw it away, the sock gnomes are there to collect it from the trash.
The discarded single socks are collected by the Keeper of the Socks and
kept safe in the Vault of Socks until Sock Day, the one day out of the
year when all eligible females have a chance to choose a single sock, the
matching sock of the one they wish to marry. If the male does not wish
to marry the gnome female, the sock is returned to the Vault of Socks.
Once a male is chosen, he becomes the female’s husband and together
they wear the matching socks as humans would wear wedding rings.