The question for today is: How seriously do you take your socks?
Is it important that you own creative, fanciful, innovative footwear? Or do you prefer your ankles to blend into the background?
Do you want your socks to make a fashion statement of their own?
Recently a Deseret Morning News photographer, an artist and a reporter roamed the streets and malls of Utah, looking at people's ankles. We discovered that you can't tell by a person's face or clothes or occupation what kind of socks he or she might be sporting.
We decided to turn our little survey into a guessing game. Please try to match these Utah faces to their socks.
Read on if you need some hints about these average Utahns and their philosophies on footwear.
Xenia Brewington, 13, likes socks. She moved here in August from Delaware. In her old school, she had a host of friends who were as crazy about socks as she is. "We always had a competition on who had the best socks." Here, at Indian Hills Middle School, she has noticed that kids are "not as big on socks" as they were in Delaware. But she has made a few friends, girls like Katy Tracy, who are semi-passionate on the subject.
Xenia's sock collection includes several pairs with individual toes. "I try not to wear boring socks, but I keep losing my good socks, so sometimes I have to wear the plain old boring ones," she said. When asked where the good ones go when they disappear, Xenia said, "I have no idea. My mom, she folds the clothes and then I see one and can't find the other and then I put that one somewhere and I end up finding the other one. . . ." and by then the first one is lost. Being a sock collector, she said,"It is hard, you know."
Xenia's mom, Laticia Brewington, who works at Merrill Lynch in downtown Salt Lake City, supports her daughter's hobby although she, herself, doesn't own any socks wilder than what you could buy at the GAP.
Zuleika Perez, a saleswoman at Victoria's Secret, owns a variety of "character" socks. When she's not working, she wears them with sneakers. When she is working, she wears them under her boots.
Miriam Ames, from Puyallup, Wash., is living in Utah while she and her husband serve a mission at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Family History Library. Her husband buys her socks. "He's into wild things," she says. He used to buy wild socks for himself, but in the past few years it seems manufacturers have stopped making wild socks for men and he's had to content himself with wild ties for himself and wild socks for his wife.
Mary Wood is a muscian, a professional horn player. She'd just come from a rehersal with the Utah Symphony when the Deseret Morning News caught her strolling through downtown Salt Lake City wearing interesting socks. Wood uses socks to add "color and variety," to her wardrobe, she said. She also owns a pair of subdued gray socks with individual toes, which she bought thinking they might be warm but which actually seem to cut off the circulation.
When asked about the sock habits of the men who play for the symphony, Wood said they don't seem to own anything except plain black or plain white socks, but that they constantly have to be reminded not to wear their white socks with their tuxes.
As for David Harris, he didn't always own weird socks. It was only when Harris became a pediatrician that he decided to adopt a more clownlike image.
He explained, "Patients and moms have told me they look forward to doctor visits to see the next silly tie or socks, and since visits to my office are commonly associated with pain — shots and blood tests — that can't be bad."
Answers
1. Xenia Brewington
2. Katy Tracy
3. Lt. Gov. Gayle McKeachnie
4. Zuleika Perez
5. Scott LaBass
6. Mary Wood
7. Miriam Aimes
8. Dr. David Harris
9. Laticia Brewington
Email: susan@desnews.com