I found the phrase “Pick up your socks” and “Have your socks bronzed” in the following sentence of Maureen Dawd’s article in today’s New York Times:
“When Barack is cocky and looks at Michelle, he might see her thinking: “You’re no messiah. Pick up your socks.” But when Newt is cocky and looks at Callista, he sees her thinking: “You are the messiah. We’ll have your socks bronzed.”
As the sentence is followed by the line, “Where Michelle sees herself as the puncturer of delusions, ‘the Department of ‘Let’s Get Real,’ as an aide called her,”
I can guess “pick up your socks” means “know yourself, be realistic” and “have your socks bronzed,” means “make you glorious/ grandeur”
Is my understanding right or off the mark? Are both of the phrases popular expressions as the antithesis?
Best Answer
Neither is an idiom. Both are meant by the speaker (Michelle/Callista) literally. Of course, there is pragmatic intention of both that is beyond the literal meaning that has some slight cultural reference.
The first example 'pick up your socks' just means that Michelle is telling her husband that he should pick up his socks, because he still lives in reality, he is not all-important in all life's aspects, he is not 'king', there is no maid to follow him and pick up everything for him (his socks that he might otherwise be too lazy to pick up himself).
The second example 'have you socks bronzed' refers to the practice (not uncommon 50 years ago in the US but now I haven't heard of) of bronzing a baby's shoes once grown out of, in order to preserve them as a memento of childhood. The bronzed shoes are like a sculpture or monument to the wonder and preciousness of childhood. One might suggest to bronze something to preserve and memorialize any other everyday object (but I've only ever heard of it for baby shoes). 'To have X bronzed' means to take something very modest and preserve it as a sculpture (literally, not figuratively).
All that Dowd is doing is setting up a situational contrast 'you're still human/you're are like a god'.
There's nothing about the two phrases that are set language idioms (they don't have slightly altered grammar or mean anything more than the literal combination of words). That is, if someone is getting uppity, telling them to pick up their socks would not be understood as anything (unless there were socks on the floor in front of them).
Summary: The situations they apply to are antithetical, but, no, they are not popular expressions/set phrases.