Good News!

For Immediate Release

All Lost Socks Returned

Efficacy of Prayer Proven, Vatican Claims; Schoolgirl Cited as Probable Cause

Staten Island, NY, April 1, 2019 — In what appears to be “a demonstration of the efficacy of prayer,” as Pope Francis pronounced from Rome earlier today, billions of lost socks have returned to their rightful owners.

Ms. Haru Tanaka

“They’re definitely mine,” said Ms. Haru Tanaka of Osaka, Japan. “I clearly remember losing this one before the big war started. And this one — see that embroidery? — vanished on my wedding night. I kicked it onto the chandelier, and we never saw it again. I always wondered where it had gone.”

Ms. Tanaka’s socks had been washed and mended during their almost 80-year absence.

Reports pouring in from around the globe indicate the simultaneous return of socks in every country. Evidence suggests that all the formerly missing items of footgear have been cleaned and repaired during their hiatus, which in some cases runs close to a century. None show any signs of aging.

“So far as we can tell, only the missing socks of the living have come back to us,” said White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “We don’t seem to be getting what you might call hereditary or legacy socks — from the first decades of the 20th century or earlier, socks belonging to those who have passed on. At least not yet. The oldest one we’ve heard of dates back to about 1920.”

Sanders confirmed that missing socks have returned to all living U.S. presidents, including the current occupant of the White House. This morning, Pres. Donald Trump tweeted, “Your FAVORITE PRESIDENT got your SOCKS back for you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MAGA!”

The record amount up till now is 350 mismatched socks that arrived en masse at the home of Hector and Esmerelda Garcia in Mexico City. “I don’t know how he does it,” Ms. Garcia said of her husband, who is 90. “From the time we got married, he can’t leave the house without coming back with a sock gone. His mother told me he was that way as a kid. I just give him any two nowadays, doesn’t matter if they’re different colors, but even in the house he loses them. So this is a blessing.”

Hector Garcia’s socks

“We was having breakfast when we hear a soft whump from the living room. We run in and there they are — just dumped all over,” Mr. Garcia added. “It’s weird enough that I keep losing them. I don’t know how to figure getting them all back at once.”

“Tipping Point” Reached

Pope Francis blessing recovered socks in Rome, April 1, 2019

In a statement released by the Vatican, Pope Francis termed the occurrence “definitely a miracle,” attributing it to “the efficacy of prayer.” Preliminary reports of the Church’s investigation suggests that “a tipping point was reached” when Tina Salmieri, a 6-year-old kindergarten student from Staten Island, New York, tearfully beseeched Saint Anthony, patron saint of lost things in Christian theology, for the return of her beloved sock puppet, Sammy.

“I was so sad about Sammy,” Ms. Salmieri recalled to a reporter, surrounded by her proud family at their Tottenville home. “I was down on my knees by my bed just before sleepytime, praying hard like Mommy said: ‘Dear Sane Antny, please come around; something’s lost and must be found.’ Then I heard a falling-down noise, and there Sammy was, just under the bed!” She displayed the sock puppet happily.

Tina Salmieri with sock puppet Sammy, Staten Island, NY, 4-1-19

Mary Salmieri, the girl’s mother, stated that the family would not have made much of the incident, but neighbors in this closely knit community began calling to ask if they had unexpectedly received any lost socks. It soon transpired that everyone within a ten-block radius had experienced a return of lost sockage at approximately the same time. News reports on radio, TV, and the internet quickly confirmed that the phenomenon was international in scope, indeed global.

“Of course there are cultures where people don’t wear socks,” George Van Zandt of UNESCO said at a press conference. “Like in Key West. And then there are parts of the world in which people are just too poor to afford socks. The underprivileged don’t mind mismatched socks. We hope to put this sudden surplus of sockage to good use.” UNESCO sock-collection centers will be established to gather excess footwear for distribution to the needy.

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Archbishop Buti Tlhagale

Vatican hermeneuticians and theologians of all persuasions everywhere are pondering the import of this unprecedented event. According to Archbishop Buti Tlhagale of Johannesburg, South Africa, two main theories currently contend. “One camp proposes that this innocent little child ‘overprayed.’ That is, that she prayed too hard for something in relation to its actual significance, especially its spiritual significance. And that this excessive though of course not sinful prayer triggered the flood of socks. This theory assumes that there are appropriate and inappropriate levels of prayer.

St Anthony of Padua

“Others,” the bishop went on, “believe that, small and seemingly unimportant though it was on any objective scale, this little girl’s importuning helped all prayer to St. Anthony, past and/or present, to achieve critical mass. This implies a cumulative effect of prayer,” Archbishop Tlhagale elaborated. Both these positions have attracted roughly equal numbers of adherents. The two camps concur only in the assumption that some “amplification” of Ms. Salmieri’s petition resulted from its occurrence in the weeks leading up to the annual Easter celebration, he noted.

Archbishop Tlhagale discounted a third possibility, proposed by some, that St. Anthony has simply been otherwise occupied, which would explain the previously erratic functioning of requests for his intercession in retrieving lost items. This same group hypothesizes that the washing and mending of the items was St. Anthony’s way of apologizing for allowing himself to get distracted for so long. “If the blessed Anthony could bilocate while among us on earth,” the bishop asserted, “surely he could multitask in Heaven.” (The saint is credited with preaching in two locations simultaneously, an appointment at his monastery having slipped his mind.) Archbishop Tlhagale waved away without comment one reporter’s suggestion that the demonstrably forgetful saint had merely emptied out his lost-sock bin arbitrarily and indiscriminately.

Boris Tomachevsky, Moscow, 2019

Not everyone is impressed with the sudden restoration of missing garments. “What I supposed to do with these? I already bought new ones,” asked Boris “Small Bor” Tomashevsky in halting English at his Moscow car-repair shop. “Maybe in old days, when you had to queue up for hours to buy socks, or go to black market, was useful. Now only good for grease rags.”

On a more cautionary note, experts in the paranormal suggest that this may prove just the beginning, and that some eventualities could have harmful effects. Dr. Suzanne Parsells of the Rhine Research Center Institute for Parapsychology in Durham, North Carolina postulates that this phenomenon might constitute a case of “mass telekinesis.” Dr. Parsells asked, “Are you ready for a deluge of heavy stuff? What if next it’s car keys? Or luggage? Or lovers? Falling socks won’t hurt anyone. We may have gotten off easy this time.”

The possibility of the recovery of lost intangibles — souls, virginity, honor, dignity, sanity, love, causes — of course presents itself for consideration, but nothing to date suggests that any of these should be anticipated in the immediate future as a result of the current situation, experts agree.

For the moment, the public everywhere has settled for dealing with the reality on the ground. Reports indicate that unmatched socks, the more unlike each other the better, have instantly become trendy among the young, showing up at hip-hop concerts and raves.

Teen Trend: Misfit Socks, screenshot, YouTube, 4-1-19

If you don’t have teenagers of your own, and are wondering what to do with your unwanted lost socks that have come back, you can visit unesco.org/socks4humanity to locate the nearest UNESCO collection center. And take comfort from the words of Fred Hamilton, president of SockPuppy, Inc., and spokesman for the U.S. sock-puppet supply industry:

“So far, no returns have happened in any way that would endanger anyone — like in the front seat of a moving vehicle, or an airplane cockpit. Still, be safe. Check your house, apartment, office, storage unit, car trunk. And remember: We’re here for you.”

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