Blending in

I once told my mother that I couldn't wear white knee socks to my Catholic grammar school because everyone else was wearing dark green ones. She asked me if there was a rule prohibiting the white socks and I said no. I was new at the school and at my old Catholic school everyone wore white, so that was what I owned. My mother told me that when the white socks wore out, she would buy me green ones, but there wasn't money to replace perfectly good socks.

I remember slamming my sock drawer and angrily telling my mother that she didn't understand how I felt. She never went to parochial school, I said. She didn't understand what a big deal knee socks were when they were one of the few items you could coordinate differently.

She smiled and asked me why the girls would choose to wear the same color as everyone else if they could accessorize their socks. Then she held up a pair of pink socks and smiled.

So the next day I wore pink socks with my plaid blue and green jumper to school. A few girls came up to me and said they wanted to wear different colors too but everyone wore green. One asked if I was going to wear a different color the next day and I said sure, that I was never going to wear green. She decided that she wasn't going to wear green any more either, because she was bored by it.

Within a week, the playground was full of girls wearing socks of all different colors and my white socks looked as if I was making a fashion statement. My only disappointment was that everyone forgot I started the trend.

I often remember those green socks after I've been out and about and I get a reaction to the way I do things differently due to my disability. I often answer questions with a sense of humor. To this day, there are people convinced that the assistive fork/knife I use is called a camping knife, for example. I tell them that it's a time saver because you don't have to wash both a fork and a knife. Impressed, many ask where I bought mine.

It's clearly an item we all need. It should be sold on TV.

I believe that my mom did me a huge favor by not buying me those socks.