52 Factorial

I threw away all my fancy socks today—

the polka dots, the bright primary colors,

Zelda prints, Spongebob, the San Diego Padres

no longer on my shins.

It occurred to me, as I was going through the drawer,

that being unique, maybe even having style,

is remarkably commonplace.

Consider a deck of playing cards.

If you shuffle it, you most likely have created a totally original deck,

one that has never existed, and will never exist again

for the history of our species.

The odds of being unique are so much in your favor

you ought to be stunned when you find someone like you—

maybe people are sometimes appropriately reverent about this,

maybe that’s why people don’t often leave their tribes—

because there’s actually nobody like you,

very few who can understand you,

and still fewer who care to try.

But I apologize. I was just trying to think about my socks.

Trying, like everyone else, to dress the animal in some kind of fashion.                   

Robbie Hammel is a writer from North County San Diego.