The TP Shuffle

We play Russian Roulette at our house…with toilet paper. It’s not as dangerous as using a gun but just as scary. We tend to enter the bathroom without checking for TP first, and there is about a 20% chance we will come up empty handed when we reach for the Charmin. Those odds aren’t very high, but the stakes are enormous. Because there are only three of us, and we all run in various directions, there is a good chance any one of us will be in the house alone when we hit the bathroom. Rarely are there reinforcements to come running to your rescue when you spin the chamber and your number comes up. We are foolish, foolish people who never seem to learn.

I think it all boils down to laziness and logistics. None of us wants to fetch it because the only decent place we have to store the big 24 roll pack is in the garage. The garage is far, far away from our bathrooms. Also, there is apparently some kind of unwritten rule that mom is the only one who can put a new roll on the dispenser. About once a week I slap on my martyr badge and trek to the garage for about six rolls. I store them in the vanity in the bathroom that Teen Angel and I use. This however, only leads to the TP Shuffle. When Hubby runs out in his bathroom, he steals from ours. We steal back and so on and so on. It’s a vicious circle that leaves you without a square when you least expect it. Hubby even tries to hide a roll, but I’m onto his little game. I know where his secret stash is. Tip: If you are ever sitting in our living room and hear banging on the other side of the West wall, it means Hubby is in the back bathroom and has lost a round in the paper wars. If you really want to have some fun just pretend like you don’t hear him for about ten minutes. What can I say? We’re old married folks. We take our laughs where we can get them.

We’re not alone in this battle against the empty roll. I read the other day where Kimberly Clark has developed an automatic TP dispenser for public restrooms. It’s to save on paper. Get this. They have conducted studies to determine how much paper this gizmo should shoot out at you for each wipe. The magic number? Five squares. Five squares???!!! That’s barely enough to blot my lipstick let alone blot my backside. The next time you go to the bathroom, peel off five squares and see how much it is. It’s not that much. Who uses just five squares? Well, that was a part of the study, too. It seems most Europeans like the number five, but in our typical “go big or go home” fashion, Americans use at least the length of our arm when we peel off the TP. Frankly, I like at least a dozen sheets unless of course, I’m at home and we’re near the end of the roll. In which case, I’ll take as few as four to avoid “officially” emptying the roll and having to go to the garage for more.