A plague of bandits

 Stanley – Thursday

 

All of us associated with the Murder is Everywhere blog are intrigued by mysteries. We devour books, movies, and TV series, pitting our wits against those of the protagonist. We always hope to see past the red herrings, devious plot twists, and misdirections to reveal the baddie before the protagonist does.

 

Despite years of practice, there is a mystery that I have never solved, actually two related mysteries.

 

We are all familiar with the term one-armed bandit, which is a name given to those infernal machines in casinos that take your money and tempt you with spinning wheels that almost land up in the correct sequence, but rarely do.

 

Since I’ve spent most of the past fifteen years or so in a perpetual summer, I had forgotten about another one-armed bandit. 

I spent most of the northern 2020/2021 winter in – ugh – the northern winter, either in Denmark or Minneapolis, which brought the memories flooding back. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been walking along when I’ve stumbled on a solitary glove.

Lonely glove

 

Never two gloves! 

 

I mean when I’ve lost gloves, I’ve lost both. Not just one. So obviously the solitary glove must be the discard from a stolen pair.

 

It seems such a waste, if I were a one-armed bandit, let’s say with a right arm, I would never throw away the left glove. I would give it to a friend with no right arm. It is obviously the correct and environmentally friendly thing to do: I get my glove, my friend gets his, and only one person has their gloves stolen.

More puzzling is the case of the one-legged bandit. It is relatively easy to steal a glove without the owner knowing, and it’s easy for the victim to go home without the embarrassment of others knowing of the crime  – but stealing a shoe? That takes a great deal of skill, especially if it’s a lace-up. I’ve pondered the technique a lot, but am still mystified. I would have to be completely immersed in writing a tense scene or eating some fine sushi not to notice someone stealing one or both of my shoes. And generally it would be both shoes, because how often have you seen someone walking along with only one?

 

How do the bandits do it?

 

And again, I’m disappointed that the perpetrator doesn’t exhibit some decency by donating the other shoe to a friend in need.

 

Most puzzling, though, are the skills of the one-legged bandits who steal socks. They accomplish this through the agency of an inanimate third party. I can’t believe there’s a reader of this blog, or of any other blog, who hasn’t lost a sock in the wash.

 

When I was young, and clothes were washed by hand, I never lost a sock. Never. It’s only when I started using washers and dryers – the bandits’ suspected accomplices – that socks started to disappear. Never both. Always only one. It doesn’t make sense.

 

Recently I was delayed in returning to Denmark from Minneapolis by a month, so I had to pay close attention to my clothing, particularly my hiking socks as I only had two pairs, and I was walking a lot. I was particularly careful to check that the correct number of socks was transferred from my washing basket to the washing machine, and then from the washing machine to the dryer. So I came to believe that the washing machine wasn’t an accomplice.

 

However on two occasions, one of my hiking socks failed to appear after being dried, even though I spun the drum through 720° and stuck my hand into every nook and cranny of the dryer. And these socks were not teeny-weeny, hard-to-see socks. They were big and heavy. 

Fortunately, I don’t really care about how I look when I walk in Minneapolis, so walking with one heavy brown sock and one heavy blue sock didn’t bother me.

Fashionable hiking

What does bother me is how those darned one-legged bandits pulled off the heist.

 

I consulted Michael about the situation, only to find that there was a South African chapter of one-legged bandits. He, too, was losing socks, one at a time. Michael’s hypothesis was that the bandits didn’t sneak in and open the dryer door while the socks were tumbling, but rather they collaborated with some unknown part of the dryer that ingests socks, one at a time. Then, when he’d finished the dry cycle and had left despondent because of a lost sock, the bandits would sneak in and retrieve the one they’d stolen.

 

At first, I didn’t like Michael’s hypothesis, because there was no evidence of the bandits coming just after the dry-cycle ended. However, when he pointed out that if the bandits didn’t come frequently, the ingestor could reach capacity and would then explode when the next sock appeared, I began to change my mind because I’d never seen an exploded dryer.

 

The whole episode got me thinking about water going down drains in the northern and southern hemispheres – you know, the counter-clockwise vs clockwise theory due to the Coriolis effect.

 

I started wondering whether there was any difference in the frequency with which left-foot socks disappeared in the northern hemisphere vs the southern. There must be at least a Master’s thesis in there somewhere.

 

Anyway, now I'm in design-conscious Denmark, I'm definitely more self-conscious about hiking with mismatched socks. So, if any of you has a heavy, brown hiking sock (left) or a heavy, blue hiking sock (also left) that you're willing to part with, please let me know. 

Lonely BS (right) seeks BS (left)