ROBIN WRITES: TP Standoff
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For 11 days, our toilet paper roller has been empty. Oh, we have toilet paper. Rolls and rolls. And it is readily available for any bathroom visitor. The pile stands atop the holder, leaning against the wall like a tissue-y Tower of Pisa.
An empty gray cardboard tube encircles the spring-loaded holder at the bottom of the tower. That is the roll I put there 11 days ago. Its edges are getting frayed, and the tube is flattened in the middle from the weight of hands grabbing the rolls of tissue balanced above it.
The first few days of displaced tissue didn’t bother me. A single new roll stood nicely on the empty tube, and it was not a big deal. I figured whoever put it there was in a hurry to leave the bathroom and would later return to place it in the holder.
It wasn’t just my job, darn it. Others had hands.
By the second or third day, the problems began. The single roll had grown smaller. Its fat, fluffy girth had dwindled to an inch of paper; it fell through the space between the holder and the wall every time it was used and set back. I picked it up from the floor and reset it on its perch.
Sooner or later, the guilty party would HAVE to notice the inconvenience of this situation and do the right thing.
Nope. I sat down the next morning and glanced over at the TP holder, expecting to see a big, puffy-white roll properly affixed to it. Instead, a big, puffy-white roll had been placed horizontally above the tiny, almost-gone roll atop the empty, gray tube.
Are my family members’ fingers suddenly incapable of compressing a plastic, spring-centered cylinder and threading a tube of bathroom tissue onto it? I checked. Everyone in the house was scratching and pointing and remote-controlling just fine.
I checked the cylinder/holder to make sure it still squeezed and could be removed from the brackets. Yep.
I can only assume this is a kind of test to see how long I’ll keep seething and stomping in and out of the bathroom before I finally cave and put a roll of paper on the roller. Are they snickering as I step inside and lock the door, wondering if “today will be the day she gives up”?
Every time I leave the bathroom, I glare at them, waiting for a hint of a smirk. So far, nothing.
Yesterday, I brought home a 12-roll block of toilet paper. I hauled it to the bathroom and dumped it on the floor next to the toilet and the empty gray tube-supported tower. I ripped open the top of the package and left it there.
What a hint. You had to contort to get around this roadblock and sit down. I would surely win the war with this obvious maneuver.
This morning, THREE big, squeezably-soft rolls of toilet paper were stacked atop four almost-gone rolls of tissue atop the fraying, empty cardboard tube that covers the spring-loaded cylinder that fits in the brackets of the toilet paper holder…
…and the cap was off the toothpaste. That’s DAY 1.
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■ Robin is a freelance columnist who lives and writes in Quincy, Illinois. Contact her at [email protected].
