We knew we had a serious problem on our hands when the entire student body of Emerson Middle School began to show up in mismatched socks. It was weird, but it wasn’t middle-school weird. You see: the socks were all wrong, but all wrong in the right way. You look down and you see one kid’s got stripes on his left foot and polka dots on his right foot standing next to another kid who’s got checkered prints on her left foot and leopard prints on her right foot, and it all looks good together, as if the students had conspired to have the same color palette. And then you look at other socks and it’s the same thing. Technically, they’re all different, but technically they all go together.