She is totally obsessed with telling people she doesn’t wear socks… ever.

I never wear socks she told me as we both sat shivering, ankle deep in snow. It wasn’t the first time she had told me that… she had an apparent need to boast about her aversion to socks. She’d thrust the fact into conversation at every chance she got: And since I don’t wear socks… Of course I had no socks on when… The last time I had socks I… — it didn’t really matter what followed because as soon as I heard the word socks I just tuned the rest of the sentence out. She could have been giving me the secrets to the universe, but I couldn’t get past her preoccupation with socks… not the objects mind you… just the concept. She was definitely obsessed with the idea of socks… the idea of not wearing them. Perhaps she saw something in bare feet that ordinary folks didn’t. Perhaps she saw freedom, perhaps she saw the sort of rebellious, anti-establishment symbol she needed to get through the day. Perhaps working 50 hours a week staring at spreadsheets in a gray office made her need at least some sort of grounding to her youth… to the running days of wet grass. Perhaps, to her, socks were like cotton shackles. I never wear socks she said again… though she never once told me why.