Socks came out in every size and color, and they started working out whose was whose.
“Dad's sock is big.”
“The baby's sock is small.”
Then the patterns — looking for the one that matched, and putting the pairs together.
“Whose sock is this one?”
“Which sock is bigger?”
An adult clipped their socks up on a line, one at a time.
They reached for them and pulled. One clapped after getting one down on their own. One pointed out which was theirs.
A child was watching the clothespins rather than the socks, so a clothespin went into their hand, and they worked at opening its mouth.
The ones who could not stand steadily enough got held up to the line.
One of them held a sock against their own foot. “That's right — socks go on feet.” So it went onto the foot, loosely, and got pulled off again.
Later a child brought over a dog puppet and wanted that on the line too. So the dog went up, and a frog after it.
A sock came out with a toy already inside it.
They felt the shape of it through the sock, worked out what was in there, talked about it — and then pulled it out to see.
Then again. And again.
And after that they were putting things in themselves.
The next day it was not toys in the sock but things from around the room — the ordinary ones that are out every day.
That went better than the toys had. They pulled each one out and laughed at it.
Then they were filling the sock themselves and carrying it over to show a friend.
The socks came rolled up into balls.
“Who can throw one furthest?”
They threw with the whole arm and watched where each one landed — on the floor, or in the basket.
Later there were cards with socks printed on them, and they went through the patterns looking for pairs.
“They're the same!”
They went through the socks by feel first, looking for pairs.
Then cotton balls started going in, pushed down hard with a thumb.
A long one went up an arm, and the arm moved like a snake.
And one went onto a hand, and that hand started scrubbing an adult's arm, and then a leg.
“I'll wash you.”
They looked at the colored socks and said what each one could be — a bear, a rabbit, a snake, a caterpillar.
Cotton went in. An elastic band went round.
“Oh — it turned into a rabbit!”
Socks and towels went out with clothespins, a clothesline and a drying rack.
One child clipped the socks onto the line. Another hung them up and put them back every time one fell — over and over.
A third was doing something else entirely: pushing bits of plastic film down into a sock, one piece at a time, and getting every one of them all the way in.
These ones had grip on the bottom.
They stretched them, rubbed them, put a hand inside to see.
Then the socks went on, and most of them wanted them straight back off.
So an adult showed them: stand up, and run your foot along the floor — it does not slide.
After that they wanted them on. One stood there rubbing a foot back and forth across the floor, again and again, checking.
They were putting socks on to go outside.
“I'll do it.”
They worked at it, hand and foot moving around each other, and it would not go on.
“Help please.”
An adult got it started as far as the toes. “Shall we go again from here?”
And they pulled it the rest of the way on themselves.