It was a rainy Sunday morning when Mark woke up for work, 7:22 sharp, like every morning. People simply didn’t understand him, well, how could they? It’s not normal to wake up every day at the same hour, but for Mark it was normal, after all being the only socks matcher in town comes with a heavy responsibility.

Mark got up and took his suit, he had 32 of them, 3 part black suits, suitable for a man of his position. Like every morning, he got out of the house at 7:53 and walked the 720 meters separating his from his office. He opened the office door and stepped in at exactly 8:00.

A magnificent sight reveled when he opened the door, thousands of ping pong balls neatly organized in rows next to a huge pile of socks.

Long ago Mark has developed a unique method for matching socks, for every pair of socks he matched he would put another ping pong ball in one of the rows.
People often tried to tell him that it’s not effective and that there are much better ways to keep track of the number of socks he paired that day, even a pen and a piece of paper will do the trick. Not to mention the fact that the balls could start rolling, someone can walk in and step on them and even the slightest breeze will send the all over the place. He didn’t listen, he never did, well how could he? People don’t know what he’s facing, they can’t imagine the amount of responsibility on Mark’s shoulders.

Every day Mark reported the number of socks he matched to his superiors, and as the day went by, the rows got longer and longer, thousands of ping pong balls on next to the other all across the floor.
Mark was happy, he didn’t care if people laughed at him, he was obsessed with his quest and he was on the right way to accomplish it. After all, those who want to accomplish great things, must keep a strict routine and keep on going until achieving what they set out to achieve.

It was weird for Mark to wake up at 6:47, it never happened before, he knew something was wrong. He got out of the bed, wore a pair of shorts and ran to the office. In 21 years, this is the first time he got to the office before 8:00 and without one of his suits.

There it was, a huge fire, raging through the office, setting his precious balls on fire.

Mark whipped, people passing tried to comfort him, “it’s just socks”, but Mark couldn’t stop crying. They didn’t understand him, well, how could they understand him? Mark was on his way to set a world record for putting ping pong balls in a row and his only way of counting, the last socks matching office, just went out in flames along with his dream.