The Loneliest Number Goes Back to School

There’s nothing about this in back-to-school guides: What happens when you only have 1 when you need 2?

Case in point:

At some point during a camping trip this past spring, my Boy Scout got hot. So, he unzipped the bottom part of the legs of his official Boy Scouts pants, thereby turning them into shorts.

Both bottoms of the pants miraculously made it home and into the wash, where one was promptly lost. And yet, he has two legs, and winter is coming.

Personally, I believe these types of pants should be outlawed  — at least in children’s sizes or until my son does all his own laundry.

Shortly after soccer season ended in the spring, my other son put his green soccer socks into the wash, where one was promptly lost. Which makes me wonder: Why not two? Why do we always lose one?

Anyhow, I’ve given up on finding the matching sock and have ordered another pair, which I hope very much will arrive prior to his first game in two weeks because Sports Authority doesn’t sell green soccer socks. Blue, white, black and red, yes. But not green.

And yet, it should come as no surprise that I am in this predicament. After all, I can’t find the match to this sock, which was a gift from the nice folks at the off-Broadway play “Secrets of a Soccer Mom,” where I’d signed books. If I can lose one very large, very royal blue sock with jumbo lettering that brings to mind the famous “Hollywood” sign, how can I be trusted with a much smaller green sock and the bottom of boys pants?

And where is that in the back-to-school guides? Nowhere, just like our missing items.