That headline is not a typo. I do mean sox. The things on your feet!

No matter what fashion or weather dictates, I wear sox 365 days a year. This I do for two reasons: sox feel good and I’m 77 years old. Why suffer discomfort when help is only a sock away? Indeed, mine brag they are the world’s softest socks — like walking around with a teddy bear strapped to the sole of each foot.

In the 1950s, no girl from AHS ever haphazardly pulled on her socks. Rather we meticulously folded them down with the same precision as executed by a Downton Abbey butler pressing the Crawley’s dinner napkins.

I remember out-of-town girls — like from Albert Lea! — who wore their socks rolled down so far their Achilles tendons showed. It was disgraceful. Even risqué! And, who was it, I’d like to know, who thought that decidedly unattractive rope-like tendon was a good part of the female anatomy to display? (Anymore I feel that same way about elbows. Small children tell me they see faces in mine!)

As a kid, I wore anklets: thin, always white. On Sundays I wore them with Mary Jane patent leather shoes. During the week I wore them with brown leather metatarsal arch support oxfords, shoes Mom insisted I wear so my arches wouldn’t fall. They never did. One point for Mom. Two points for metatarsal arch supports!

Of course, anklets were for Minnesota’s mild weather. When, however, the winter chills blew in, Mom required that I wear long, very thick, ribbed cotton stockings that went all the way to my upper thighs. They came in a flesh tone, which I guess the designer thought fooled people into thinking they were my skin. I think I hated them even though I grudgingly admitted they helped keep me warm. Still, as a fashion statement they were failures. They did not look like skin, they were bulky and they, more often than not, developed an ungorgeous sag when my garter belt lost its grip, a disquietude that unfortunately happened on a regular basis.

My brothers wore athletic socks, something I later adopted in my teens. But, their most braggadocious claim to soxual fame was their slipper socks: wool socks with leather soles sewn on with fake hand stitching. High on a parent’s Christmas gift giving list, slipper socks came fresh out of the package, but as they aged — beginning in early February — they stretched and pilled and the curse of shabbiness rapidly consumed them. Additionally, the interiors were soon besmirched with a clammy fustiness that quickly ripened into something which reproduced itself, my brothers seemingly not minding while it caused me to gag. (If we’d been wearing our thinking caps, we would have quickly discovered they were an ideal place to grow mushrooms!)

By March there was a decided downturn in dependability when both boys were turned into Donald Duck as the state of their socks stretched alarmingly beyond their original intent. I can still hear the boys flapping through the house, their enlarged leather soles smacking against the kitchen linoleum floor. Pair-by-pair the once proud footwear bit the dust, their taut, formerly foot-fitting threads giving way to uncontrolled resilience, then downright sluggishness … unattractive by any slipper-sock-stretch of the imagination. In the end, the dads inherited these failures, their overloaded closets graveyards of disappointment.

As for me, I wore slippers with the heads of cartoon characters perched on my toes. I’m pretty sure my brothers were jealous, but their Minnesota lumber jack mentality would never have allowed them to stoop to such a perky low.

Quite possibly the biggest fashion jump we girls ever made was going from bobby socks to nylons, the leap enormous! Nylons were glamorous alright, but also impractical. They were not warm, were expensive and as flimsy as spider webs. There was also that pesky cardinal rule that the seams had to remain smack dab in the middle of our calves, as if any of us could control that. Wandering, unstylish seams, you must understand, were an unwritten, easily recognizable social sin.

And, heaven help the girl whose seams arched out like parentheses for she resembled a ranch hand who had been riding horses too long. To avoid this societal sting, we girls religiously checked the backs of our legs, cupping our hands around our calves to manipulate any necessary seam adjustments. Not every girl was diligent in doing this. Many a seam resembled the wanton path of a drunken driver, thereby creating yet one more civic burden such undisciplined girls had to bear.

Life became astonishingly simpler when the seamless nylon was invented. Who knows what sainted person made this discovery? And why are there no statues in every town center where we, the beholden, can kowtow to his/her brilliance?

During my first year of college, I went to a girls’ finishing school, a place that required we always look good. Look finished! Indeed, if any of our teachers thought we had the audacity to go barelegged, they would stop us anywhere on campus and feel our legs. Woe to the girl who used an eyebrow pencil to draw a line up the back of her legs for she was publicly lambasted for breaching the rules. Punishment followed.

We women of a certain age will recall how it felt when our nylons ran. Remember? It was as if a cheeky, very fast ant had just zoomed up our legs. Right under our skirts! This mortifying sensation was so pronounced — like a fingernail across a blackboard — that we were certain everyone else felt it, too. Especially the boys! It was way too personal and by any measure in the same camp as those girls from Albert Lea who exposed their Achilles tendons!

Some girls called “runs” “ladders,” but I think they were from Albert Lea, too. We all had a bottle of clear nail polish in our lockers or purses in the event of a run. Mind you, not all runs started from the bottom and went up. Some took the opposite route. Some even began at the knee thus having the choice of zipping up or down. Then there was the full Monty run that began at the high thigh. It was like Peyton Manning running a 100 yard touchdown down your leg.

Runs demanded quick action. We walked as stiff legged as possible (deterring any further runs) to the nearest bathroom where we applied the polish at the starting point of the run. We also cleverly painted an interrupting path at the other end in the hopes of stopping its progression. If we had no choice, we sometimes did this with colored polish, but only if the run was covered by our skirts. Who wanted one more red dot on her legs? Heck, we already had enough nicks and scrapes from our devilish safety razors.

Applying polish had to be done quickly between classes. But, alas, there was little time for the slow-drying polish to cure. Think back, girls. In your haste, how many times did you get up from your desk only to find your slip and your skirt both glued to your leg? Not only did this look puckered and uncharming, but it also smarted like crazy when the stiff patch was ripped off. It begs the question of how we girls grew up rational!

Straight pencil thin skirts were the rage in the ‘50s. They looked smooth and fine and lovely … until we sat down. Then our dreaded garters visibly pooched up through the fabric like an M&M sitting atop each thigh. It was so embarrassing — like our underwear showing … which it was! And we knew the boys were looking. But, what was a girl to do? We needed garters to hold up our nylons.

Three choices existed: a large rubber band which not only cut off our circulation but was also an undependable anchor, the stoic Warner’s Long Line Girdle or the garter belt. I went the Warners route because the garter belt looked suspiciously as if it had been invented by the same men who also invented parachute harnesses. With the garter’s octopus-like network of wide elastic bands and clattering garters, this precarious contraption never saved anyone’s life, but it threatened many.

As we girl reminisce over this, we nod our heads in agreement. Men, on the other hand — and the girls of the pantyhose generation — haven’t a clue what I’m talking about.

Peggy Keener of Austin is the author of two books: “Potato In A Rice Bowl” and “Wondahful Mammaries.” Peggy Keener invites readers to share their memories with her by emailing pggyknr@yahoo.com. Memories shared with Keener may be shared or referenced in subsequent editions of “Full Circle.”