Ah, my beloved (be-holed) rainbow socks. They’ve been my Twitter avatar almost since the beginning. Which leaves a lot of people asking.. WHY??? Why is a sensible adult using rainbow socks for their public image?
It’s actually kind of a sad story. Pull up a chair and I’ll tell you all about it…
Way back in the day, when I was young and airports didn’t have security lines, I was poor. My parents were divorced, my mother worked hard to pay the bills, we lived paycheck-to-paycheck, but we never had money for extras. My clothes were hand-me-downs. My socks were the cheap 10-to-a-pack white ones. I had clothes but they never were things I got to choose. They were simply there to be functional.
By the time I graduated high school all the colors I had in my closet were black, white, and gray (school colors and school shirts) and a couple pairs of ragged jeans. It looked depressing and I really hated it. So my first act of rebellion was to spend $10 on an obnoxiously bright pink shirt with a silver lotus on it. My college roommate told me it was a slutty color and I happily wore it any time I wanted to annoy her.
Over time I slowly built a colorful wardrobe, still heavy on black, but I added more gem tones. I loved the bright colors but not every bright color works with my skin tone. But socks? Socks go with everything. Fun socks can be worn to serious meetings. Bright colors on my feet make me happy on a gray winter day. And after a childhood spent envying the girls with pretty, lacy, fun socks I was not going to go back to 10-to-a-pack socks unless the zombies ate every tie-dye kit in the coming apocalypse.
The rainbow socks were added to my closet about the same time that I joined Twitter. On a particularly bad day, sitting in the winter sunshine of Alabama, I snapped a pic and posted it as my Twitter avatar. It was meant to be a silly, momentary thing. I changed it a few weeks later and got yelled at! Eeep!
The socks stayed. The background has changed a few times. I’ve added tags. But the socks have stayed. Their a little punch of light in the darkness. A reminder of the things I’ve gone through to get to a place where I can enjoy my colors. I like being a bright spot in the darkness, don’t you?