Lucky Socks

In 2005, one of my Christmas gifts, a stocking stuffer, appropriately, was a pair of Timberland socks, very similar to the pair pictured here.

How, you may ask, can I remember the specific year that I received such a relatively small gift? Well, I remember putting them on for the first time the morning that the sixth seeded Pittsburgh Steelers played the Cincinnati Bengals in the opening round of the NFL Playoffs.  The Steelers won that game, so I wore those socks once again a week later when the Steelers took on and defeated the heavily favored Payton Manning-led Indianapolis Colts. You can guess the rest of the story.  I wore those same socks on game days right up to that Super Bowl win over Seattle that year.  They became known as my "lucky socks" and they got the team through another Super Bowl win two years later over Arizona.

The socks are now eight years old and still in great shape.  (Timberland stuff is expensive but you really do get what you pay for.)  I mention this because I pulled out those socks last week and wore them as the Steelers took on the Packers at Lambeau, and, well, you know what happened.  I shall be wearing them tomorrow as the Steelers take on the Browns, where I am pretty sure that they will work their magic once again.  I can only hope that these powerful socks can make the dominoes fall for the Steelers in those other three games that will impact the team's playoff hopes for 2013. 

Hey, as those commercials say, it's only weird if it doesn't work!  And I will cut off any smart alec comments by saying that the socks DO get laundered after each wear.

OK, in the interest of Full Disclosure, I confess that I also wore them in that Super Bowl loss against the Packers, but those socks still have a pretty good record.