‘MPERSAND: 1/18/2002

You’ve got stinky feet, don’t you? And we’ll bet you’ve got something icky growing between your toes, too. You know what your problem is? Your socks. Luckily, we here at the ol’ Free Press are sock experts.

The first thing you have to think about is comfort. Your socks should be soft: Think, “tiny fluffy bunnies tied to the bottom of your feet.” Don’t worry about the squealing.

You need reinforced toes and heels. Otherwise, the bottoms of your feet will get all crusty, kind of like the top of the peanut butter jar that night you forgot to put the lid back on and left the jar on the counter. If you’ve got arch problems, you’ll want to get something with a double-thick sole, unless, of course, you’re going for the “I might as well have stepped on a land mine” look.

Your next mission: fight the funk. There’s a reason your grandma keeps buying you more shoes. She wants your nasty feet contained at all times. Of course, we can’t do much for you until you start washing those disgusting dogs (trust us), but we can recommend loose-knit socks. Hopefully the stink will escape through the holes in the knit (the hole in the heel doesn’t count) and dissipate before anyone notices you’re a walking Tinactin commercial.

Those two hints should help your ugly pods, but what are you going to do with your old socks? It’s a good thing us Free Press staffers are creative home-care experts, too.

One thing you could do is pad the ultra-thin walls of your dorm room so your neighbors can’t hear you singing “Love is a Battlefield” at 3 o’clock in the morning (just make sure you douse them with Febreze first). Or you could fill the socks with seed, tie the open end shut and poke a few holes in the socks to make some neat-o birdfeeders. Or you could give something back and sew the socks onto a cold, lonely sheep.

Just keep ’em away from us. We’ve already got weapons-grade used boxers.