Clyde has giant feet.
This is relevant.
Clyde also commonly does not wear socks. Or shoes, really, unless circumstances demand them. His preferred approach to footwear is generally some variation of slides—something that can be put on with minimal effort when Clyde is forced to leave the house and venture among the public.
So one summer day in 2025, Clyde found himself sitting in a crowded doctor’s office waiting room.
No socks.
Just Clyde, his enormous feet, his phone, and the usual collection of strangers waiting for somebody to call their name.
Sitting beside Clyde was a young boy.
He was approximately yay tall.
The boy looked at Clyde.
Clyde looked at his phone.
The boy looked at Clyde’s feet.
Then he spoke.
“You don’t have any socks.”
Clyde looked over.
“No, I don’t.”
The boy thought about this for a moment.
Then he offered a solution.
“Would you like one of mine? That way we could each have one.”
Clyde was not prepared for that.
Somewhere in that waiting room were this boy’s parents, and Clyde immediately wanted to find them and tell them that whatever they were doing, they were doing something right.
The boy did not know Clyde.
Clyde was probably older than his father.
There was no reason for this child to be concerned about the sock situation of a very large stranger sitting beside him.
But in the simple accounting system of a child, the problem was obvious.
He had two socks.
Clyde had none.
Two people.
Two socks.
One sock each.
He did not look at what he had and think about how to protect it.
He looked at what he had and realized he had enough to share.
And there is something worth remembering in that.
Adults become very good at measuring what we have against what we might need later. We save. We protect. We plan. We worry about whether there will be enough.
Those are often responsible things to do.
But somewhere along the way, it can become easy to stop noticing the person sitting next to us.
That little boy felt rich.
He had two socks.
And in his mind, that was enough wealth to make sure a complete stranger did not have to go without.
Clyde did not need the sock.
But Clyde has remembered the offer.
Because generosity is not always about having a great deal to give.
Sometimes it is simply looking at what you have, looking at someone else, and deciding:
I have enough that you should have some too.
The world would probably be a little better if, every now and then, we all counted our socks the way that kid did.