Get ready. Sit yourself down. Take a Xanax, or maybe even two. Because I don't think that in an unmedicated state you can handle what I'm about to do. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to blog about my socks.

My socks have always been somewhat of a topic of conversation among my friends, as long as I can remember. When I really think about it, it all started in kindergarten, when some little douchebag asked me, "Why are your socks ... blue?" articulating the word blue as if he were asking why my socks were ... covered in dog puke. I answered in the obvious way, "Because my shirt is blue." Duh. I looked at his socks, white athletic tube socks no doubt. Ridiculous. They didn't match anything at all. What a fucken retard.

I soon realized that no one in my entire class wore colored socks. But still, I didn't want to wear the white socks everyone else wore. So I kept wearing my colored socks all through elementary school, much to the derision of my classmates. Well, maybe not so much derision as confusion.

I think I switched to white socks when I got to junior high, because it was really weird and gauche to wear brown socks with shorts (or even sweats) in gym class. I realize now that I should have brought different socks for gym (jeezus ... even for hygenic reasons) but that didn't occur to me then.

But as soon as that gym class nonsense ended, I went right back to the various weird socks -- socks purchased in individual pairs as opposed to socks purchased in a bag.

I have so many different pairs of socks. I have socks with bands of stripes going all the way down, as opposed to just around the calf, socks with stripes around the toe and nowhere else, and socks with stripes only around the mid-foot. I have a pair of cashmere socks that I purchased at 95% off, whose original price was $149. I have socks with scorpions on them. I have a pair of argyle socks that I started wearing when I was a virgin and have outlasted every girlfriend I've ever had in my entire life.

Maybe that last one isn't something I should brag about.