“Anything can happen at any moment,” Jessica kept exclaiming. “Anything can just happen.” (pg. 247)
Deborah’s story, “The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor,” addresses themes of death, acceptance, and the future. It follows a girl Francie after an argument with her roommate, Jessica, about a sock on the floor as she deals with what to do after the loss of her mother.
As Francie is coming to terms with the loss of her mother, she often asks those around her what she does next. All answers were next step solutions for the immediate future. Francie was looking for what she should do with her life. While leaving the financial office of her school she thought about how pointless this school was, while leaving the hospital she questioned what would happen to her since she had no family left, to finally wrapping around to the lat conversation with her mother, questioning who her father was. Once on the way to meet her father she comes to accept the state her life has become.
The title of the story connects and represents the old Francie. She would be worrying about little things she cant control, much like the out-of-the-blue death of her mother or the sock on the floor of her room. Now she begins to learn to let go of the small things go and focusing on the big picture, her life with out her mother, and meeting a father she knew nothing about in regards to her mother’s passing.