�You need to wear clothes that will show your personality�� read the email from K., the student council internal vice president.

Huh, I thought? How was I supposed to do that? I figured I�d ask my roommates for suggestions on what to wear for my personality picture in UCLA�s student paper, The Daily Bruin. I don�t usually seek their opinions, but they always offer, especially when it has to do with guys. I logged off my email account, grabbed my backpack and locked up the office. I was off for another weekend of sleep, studying, college football games, and more sleep.

When I got home twenty minutes later, the apartment was empty. Ome was probably off at some meeting with other student leaders. Pato might have gone to her mom�s house for the weekend, and Vane was off with her boyfriend who was home for fall break from his East Coast school.

I didn�t think much about the picture until Sunday night. By that time I had already spoken to my roommates. Vane suggested I wear a Chicana power t-shirt and volunteered to lend me one of her own. Pato agreed that it was a good idea, and Ome was still unavailable for comment.

I liked the idea, but something was missing. Maybe I should style my hair a certain way. Curls, perhaps? No, that wouldn�t be �me� since my usual style is just leaving my hair down or tying it back with a clip or rubber band. Or maybe I should take some kind of prop, since that was one of the suggestions K. included. I could take a picture with my trombone, but that wouldn�t say much because I haven�t played it in a while. However, it might convey that I love music and all aspects related to it. Still, the trombone was too bulky to carry around. I decided to take my collection of Sakura Gelly Roll pens and incorporate them in some way into the picture.

So, I was almost set for my picture on Monday, but I still lacked something. Then, all of a sudden, the light bulb above my head brightened up like a neon sign on the Las Vegas strip. Eureka! I had found the missing element of my personality picture. In my portrait, I�d show a pair of my trademark brightly colored and patterned socks along with my usual jeans and Chicana power t-shirt.

Note: Alright, so it took me a while to get to the part where socks actually enter the story, but I had to do something that was interesting and autobiographical, right? Back to the regularly scheduled program.

If you thought it took me a while to choose an outfit, you haven�t witnessed the extent of my indecisiveness. I opened up my sock drawer and admired the brilliant hues of blues, blacks, purples, greens, reds, yellows, oranges and browns. My collection of 31 pairs of socks is stuffed into the second drawer along with a few shirts and sweaters. I pulled out a few of my favorites:

|1| The light blue socks speckled with penguins that my brother, Adrian, gave me for Christmas. Ever since I had a conversation with a guy I dated about penguins, this pair has been one of my favorites.

|2| The blue tie-dyed socks (I�m wearing these right now).

|3| The rainbow striped socks, which were part of the original collection.

|4| The socks with Max the Monkey on them, a gift from one of my cousins.

|5| The purple socks with rainbow zig zag stripes. I don�t wear these too often since I don�t have much purple clothes.

|6| The black socks with silver sparkles that I call my millennium socks because I wore them to a New Year�s Eve party in 1999.

|7| One of my 4 butterfly pairs. This pair had a blue butterfly pattern.

|8| The �Kerckhoff Coffee House� pair named so because they resemble the cups from a coffee house on campus.

|9| The Winnie the Pooh socks with anti-slide grip on the bottom.

|10| The final pair were the �sexy socks,� which are too difficult to describe.

Heh, did I say a �few�? Oh, well, I guess I got a little bit carried away.

I called over Vane and Pato to vote on which pair they preferred. Vane suggested that I not wear the millennium or tie-dyed socks because it would be difficult to make out the pattern in a black and white photo. She settled on the penguins and added that they had always been her favorite. Pato concurred with Vane since she has an affinity for the silly Arctic birds too. I agreed with my roommates� votes and put on the socks since my toes were beginning to get cold.

So, you may be wondering why socks are so special to me. Well you�re in the same position as I am, but as more people learn about my sock fetish I�ve begun to think about why it is that I have such an odd obsession. I�ve come up with a few reasons. In high school I did it because it was unusual and it was one of the few things I was willing to do to deviate from the norm. Plus, there was a really strict dress code that allowed for little individuality to shine through, at least in our wardrobe. Back then I only had about 5 pairs, one for each day of the week, but my collection slowly began to grow and the solid white bobby socks eventually disappeared.

The socks have become part of �me� just like �short/long brown hair and stuff.� Unless I�m wearing sandals, you will surely find a cute pair of socks on my feet. Most of the times I dress like most other students, except for my socks. They provide some kind of variety to the monotony of my usual jeans/khakis, t-shirts, and tennis shoes outfits. The diversity you find in my sock drawer is also something I seek to replicate in the other areas of my life. It�s seeped into my interdisciplinary Chicana/o Studies major. You can see it in my eclectic music taste that crosses artificial language, genre and age barriers. It�s in my pen collection of over 100 different colors. And you can definitely see it in the type of people I surround myself with who speak different languages, come from different parts of the world, have different faiths, and have completely different experiences than I do. Diversity is good and it�s not limited to the sock drawer.

� fin �

I bet you didn�t think you could learn so much about me simply from my socks, did you?

[Inspired by Dom last October]

Me siento:
Escuchando:

M�s reciente:
Searches - 09.16.05
the big move - 07.29.05
mother and daughter: a comparative analysis - 07.28.05
jardineros y dom�sticas - 07.27.05
tough question - 07.25.05

antes // despu�s