Dispatches from Babyville

No Slouch: A Middle School Story

My youngest child, Terza, is starting middle school this fall. And I am thinking about socks. 

Slouch socks. 

E.G. Smith slouch socks. 

If you entered puberty in the mid-80s as I did, these words will catapult you back in time and place — like Proust’s madeleine, only instead of landing in the French kitchen of your beloved aunt, you’ll land in a middle school hallway in Bay Ridge, rank with Aquanet and newly-acquired B.O.

In 1987, in middle school, in Bay Ridge, E.G. Smith slouch socks were de rigueur. They weren’t a fashion choice so much as a fashion necessity. In the same way that you didn’t show up to school without pants on, you didn’t show up to school without E.G. Smith slouch socks on. For the uninitiated, I’ll pause here to offer a description. 

E.G.s were huge — figuratively and literally. They were at least five times as thick as the thickest sock you’d ever worn, including those SmartWool ones with magical properties that can keep your feet warm even when they’re plunged into an ice bath in the Siberian tundra. E.G.s reached to your mid-calf, but of course you’d never wear them like that — they were made to scrunch. When pushed down towards your ankle, they’d fold in neat, lovely piles of cotton knit, piles so robust, you’d have to roll your pants up to accommodate them. 

Without EG socks, you couldn’t peg your pants, and if you couldn’t peg your pants, you looked, well, 11 year-old Nicole would have said, ridiculous. Clueless. Clown-ish 

Adult Nicole knows the word is conspicuous. And it’s one thing no middle schooler ever wants to be. 

I didn’t particularly like the socks, I didn’t even want them, really. But I needed them. Desperately. 

The problem was what the problem always is, for all middle schoolers: Mothers 

My mother, a woman so fond of sales, promotions and clearance that our childhood pet was a one-eyed bird bought at a sizeable discount, would not purchase me a pair of E.G. socks. 

“Are you crazy?” she’d said when I’d pointed the socks out in a department store, sometime towards the end of sixth grade. “These cost $10! For one pair! One pair of socks!” 

“But I only need one pair!” I protested. “I’ll wear them every day, I swear.” 

“You’ll wear dirty socks?” 

“Yes!” 

She shook her head resolutely. “Over my dead body am I sending you to school with dirty socks” She turned away from the tantalizing display of slouch socks to the sale rack where anemic-looking hosiery hung, the price slashed down by half because no one with half a pulse would be caught dead wearing them. 

“Here,” she said, fingering a pair of the on-sale neon green socks. “We can buy five pairs of these for the price of one of those.” She slipped a pair off the display and handed them to me with a smile. “And I think these are better. They’re funky.” 

Funky is the word my mother invoked to persuade me that something I found repellant was cool. It always had the reverse effect. 

I shoved the funky socks back on the rack and explained to my mother that I needed the E.G. socks. That she was single-handedly responsible for saving me from ostracism or relegating me to it. Likely, the words I used to communicate this sentiment were, “You’re ruining my life!’

“Such a drama queen,” she replied. 

“Everyone has a pair!” I tried once more. 

But all this did was elicit the ever-reliable response, one of my mother’s favorites: “If everybody jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you?” 

“If I didn’t have E.G. socks,” I wanted to tell her. “I might.” 

We left the store, sans socks, and I remember feeling befuddled at how it was possible that my mother didn’t understand. Had she not been a human pre-teen? Had the blustery winds of social approbation and peer pressure not blown upon her? 

It’s odd to find yourself on the opposite end of the equation, suddenly the mother with the wallet in her hand, the one pursing her lips, shaking her head, saying, 

“Are you joking?” and . . . 

“Because I said so,” and . . . 

“Do I care that everyone else has a hoverboard/ puppy/ nose ring/ smartphone? I’m not everyone else’s mother! I’m your mother!” and, inevitably . . . 

“If everyone else jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you?” 

All my kids have inherited my stubbornness, perhaps Terza most of all. She’s prone to drawing up persuasive Powerpoint presentations to advance her case, walking me through the various benefits of whatever she’s lobbying for. For some requests (hoverboard) I hold my ground, for others (puppy), I allow myself to be convinced. 

Experts tell you to pick your battles, but what they don’t tell you is how hard that is to do. Distinguishing the valiant, worthy battles from the petty and unnecessary ones is not a small feat. Knowing how long to hold the line and when to retreat, these are challenging decisions. Maybe the problem is the metaphor itself, because even though it feels like you’re battling your child, especially in those years between twelve and twenty, what you’re really doing is battling the threats and dangers, both short and long-term, that seem to lurk at every turn. You want them to learn fiscal responsibility so the peril of penury won’t touch them. You want them to reject a “by any means necessary” approach to fitting in, so they’ll grow resilient, strong and confident. And sometimes, you just think the overpriced socks they want to buy are hideous. And you’re not wrong. 

A few weeks after the trip to the department store, my mother came home with E.G. Smith socks for me. It was just after July 4th, and the pair she’d nabbed, with red, white and blue stripes, had been marked half price off because they were seasonal. 

The Independence Day fireworks had ended but the fireworks in my heart combusted with special force. Relief, gratitude and excitement exploded inside of me, not just because I was looking forward to wearing the socks to school, but because, belatedly, my mother had understood. Maybe she’d remembered a pair of bell bottoms or a psychedelic-print polyester shirt she’d pined for in her adolescence. 

I slipped my feet into the unthinkably thick socks, and slouched them down, admiring their overly patriotic but wonderfully indulgent folds. I wore those socks, dirty or not, all year. 

Nicole C. Kear is the author of the memoir Now I See You, and ten books for children. She lives in Park Slope with her husband, three kids, and absolutely no slouch socks.