My name is Loc. And I think I’d make a terrible presidency.
Well, I’d never actually thought of it until then.
I was sitting at a small sidewalk café near the office, sipping a lukewarm coffee while half-listening to my colleagues talk during lunch break.
The conversation had somehow spiraled into the usual “What if you were president?” nonsense.
Mr. Huy from Accounting, chewing on a piece of bánh mì, slammed his hand on the table excitedly.
“If I were president and the people rose up against me, I’d declare martial law immediately. Curfew at 8 PM. Anyone protesting gets sent to re-education camp… with mandatory team-building exercises.”
Ngoc from Marketing laughed. “I’d go full soft power. Free concert every weekend, lower taxes on bubble tea, and anyone who protests has to post a public apology video with a filter.”
They all turned to me.
“What about you, Loc? If you were president and the entire country rose up demanding your resignation, what would you do?”
I stirred my coffee slowly, staring into the dark liquid as if it might give me an actual answer.
After a long pause, I shrugged.
“I’d probably just… open the palace gates, hand them the key, and say ‘Yeah, fair enough. I wasn’t doing a great job anyway.’ Then I’d go home, turn on the ceiling fan, order a pizza, and take a nap. Let the next guy deal with it.”
The table went quiet for half a second.
Then everyone burst out laughing, thinking it was a joke.
I wasn’t joking.
But as I took another sip of my coffee, a strange, quiet thought crossed my mind:
What if the people really did rise up one day?
And what if the one they were rising up against… wasn’t some evil dictator, but just a tired, lazy version of me?
I smiled faintly to myself, a small, self-mocking smile.
Some questions are better left unanswered.
Especially when your biggest act of rebellion lately has been doing laundry.
..
I woke up at 10:47 AM with a rare, dangerous thought.
‘Maybe I should do laundry today.’
It was a stupid idea. A dangerous idea. But after everything that happened recently, I told myself I needed to start acting like a semi-functional adult. Just once.
So I did the unthinkable.
I gathered all my dirty clothes — which, by this point, had evolved into their own ecosystem — stuffed them into a big plastic bag, and dragged them down to the shared laundry room in the basement.
Big mistake.
The first sign something was wrong was when I dropped a single sock while loading the machine.
Just one sock. Gray. With a hole in the toe.
It fell behind the washing machine. I was too lazy to reach for it, so I shrugged and continued.
Ten minutes later, while I was waiting for the cycle to finish, I heard a strange noise coming from behind the machine.
Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.
I ignored it.
Then the entire building’s power flickered.
Then every washing machine in the room started spinning at the same time — even the ones that weren’t turned on.
Then the sock emerged.
Except now it was the size of a dog. And it had grown tiny arms and legs. And it was wearing sunglasses.
It looked at me.
“Sup,” it said in a deep, raspy voice. “Name’s Sockthulhu. Thanks for the existential fuel, bro.”
From that point on, the day became unhinged.
The rogue sock had apparently awakened “The Sock Dimension” — a parallel reality where all lost socks go to become sentient beings with attitude problems. And because I had been neglecting my laundry for three months straight, the portal was extra unstable.
By 1 PM, the basement was flooded with sentient socks of all kinds:
• Angry gym socks that formed a gang and started shaking down the building’s Wi-Fi router.
• A pair of elegant black dress socks that spoke only in Shakespearean English and tried to court Ms. Lan.
• One lonely rainbow toe sock that just wanted to be loved and kept crying glitter.
I tried to fix it by turning off the washing machine.
The machine responded by spitting out a legion of tiny boxer shorts that marched upstairs like a tiny perverted army, chanting “Freedom for the crotch region!”
Minh showed up fifteen minutes later, eating instant noodles straight from the pot.
“Bro. You tried to be responsible for once and this is what happens?” He shook his head in awe. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Can you help?” I asked, deadpan, while a sock tried to climb my leg.
Minh took another slurp of noodles.
“Nah. This is character development. You gotta handle this one yourself.”
By 4 PM, the entire building was in chaos.
People were chasing flying socks. Someone tried to negotiate with a particularly philosophical sock that refused to be worn because “existence is suffering.”
Tram walked past the laundry room, saw me wrestling with three rebellious socks at once, and just sighed.
“You know,” she said, “most people just do laundry and nothing weird happens.”
“Yeah,” I replied, pinning a sock to the ground. “But I’m not most people.”
She almost smiled. Almost.
By 7 PM, the laundry room had become a full-blown diplomatic crisis zone.
The sentient socks had declared the folding table as “neutral ground” and demanded a formal negotiation. So there I was — sitting cross-legged on the damn table like it was the United Nations — surrounded by dozens of tiny, furious socks.
The leader sock (still wearing those ridiculous tiny sunglasses) stood on top of a detergent box, arms crossed like a mafia boss.
“You, the Great Neglecter,” it rasped in a deep voice. “You have been found guilty of sock crimes against humanity. Lost socks. Unpaired socks. Socks left to rot in the dryer for three months. How do you plead?”
I rubbed my temples.
“…Guilty.”
A wave of angry “Boo!” and “Shame!” erupted from the sock parliament.
A pink ankle sock raised its tiny limb. “He must pay reparations!”
Another gym sock yelled, “Public execution by static shock!”
Minh, leaning against the washing machine eating chips, offered absolutely zero help.
“Bro, this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he mumbled with his mouth full. “Keep going. I’m live-streaming this in my head.”
I sighed and tried to negotiate like a responsible adult.
“Look… I know I’ve been a terrible sock owner. I throw you guys in without separating colors. I forget to clean the lint trap. I wear you until you have more holes than fabric. I’m… a monster.”
The socks murmured, somewhat appeased.
The leader sock leaned forward.
“Final offer. You will wear mismatched socks for the next 30 days. Publicly. No hiding. No excuses. And you must apologize to every single sock you’ve ever lost.”
I stared at the sea of angry fabric.
“…Can we negotiate the 30 days down to—”
“THIRTY DAYS OR WAR!” screamed a particularly unhinged toe sock.
I raised both hands in surrender.
“Fine. Deal.”
The moment the words left my mouth, all the socks let out a triumphant cheer. They dissolved back into normal, harmless fabric and fluttered down onto the floor in neat little piles like nothing had happened.
I sat there on the folding table for a few more seconds, staring at the mountain of laundry surrounding me, feeling both victorious and deeply violated.
Minh, who had been watching the whole scene with an excited look, gave me a slow clap.
“Bro. You just held a UN summit… on a laundry table… with socks. I think this is your Magnum Opus.”
Quan appeared at the door, holding two cans of beer, looking equal parts amused and concerned.
“So… did you reach an agreement with the Sock Nation?”
I climbed down from the table like a war criminal returning from peace talks.
“Yeah. Thirty days of public mismatched socks. No exceptions. They also demanded I apologize to every single lost sock I’ve ever abandoned.”
I picked up one lonely gray sock from the floor and sighed.
“Sorry, man. You deserved better.”
Quan tried — and failed — to hold in his laughter.
“You’re literally negotiating with laundry now. This is peak character development.”
I took the beer can he offered, cracked it open, and took a long sip while staring into the distance like a traumatized veteran.
“Next time I feel like being a responsible adult,” I muttered, “remind me to just set everything on fire instead.”
Minh patted my shoulder solemnly.
“Welcome back to the club, my friend. The ‘Never Try Again’ club.”
As we walked out of the laundry room, I looked down at my feet — already wearing one black sock and one white sock with tiny ducks on it.
I let out a long, defeated sigh.
“…At least they’re clean.”
Somewhere behind us, I swear I heard one last tiny sock whisper:
“Based.”
