Les Bonnes Choses

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard about problems that some high-profile celebrities have been having with their addictions.

How did living under a rock come to be synonymous with being uninformed? People live in lots of different places, so I don't know why that particular building material was singled out as being a marker of ignorance. Asphalt doesn't seem especially clever, so I don't know what gives people with shingled rooves the right to be so high-and-mighty. Maybe people living under rocks know something that the rest of us don't? Do they have well-placed spies in North Korea telling them that Kim Jong Il has to be talked down from pushing the button once a week?

Anyways, last night, Rebecca and I went out for dinner while Amy spoiled our two kids with a trip to Baskin-Robbins. Over dinner, my addiction to socks came up. Rebecca first knit me a pair of socks some number of years ago -- my first time getting a pair of knit socks. They weren't like all the other socks I've had before; these socks were different. Soon I started asking for socks all the time. She told me that most knitters aren't very promiscuous -- she hasn't knit socks for many people, and that a pair of hand-knit socks is very special, and something you do only for people you care deeply about. Then I started to feel bad about pressuring her to make me socks all the time. Perhaps all those times she said she felt too tired to knit me some socks it was just her way of saying I should give her time -- to finish her cardigan.

So I now that I recognize that I have a problem, I will try to keep it from affecting our relationship. And I suppose in the end I can be grateful that I am one of the few people for whom Rebecca has knit socks. Because when you knit socks for a person, you are knitting socks for everyone who has knit socks for that person. Or something like that.