Toilet Paper...by Mary Hazlett

So the other day, I was changing my toilet paper roll and I started to think about my history with toilet paper.  Funny how something so meaningless and simple as toilet paper can have a history with a person. 

It all began, with me that is, when I was a little thing.  Mom would take us to the local IGA grocery store and we would begin our weekly adventure of filling the cart or carts with our necessities.  Mom would sometimes rip up the grocery list into smaller lists and hand them out to the children and then we would scavenge for the best product at the best price and meet up with Mom again.  It seemed that I always got the crappy part of the list...quite literally... the toilet paper.

Toilet paper in the Terry household was purchased and distributed in an organized manner just like everything else in the house.  So, when the toilet paper was purchased it had to coordinate with the bathroom colors...pink for the pink bath, peach for the peach bath, blue for the blue bath, and tan for the brown bath.  (For obvious reasons the closest match to the brown bath was tan.)  Although the colors matched the bathrooms, the quality of the toilet paper left a little to be desired...like maybe a pinecone.

Being the youngest of eight in the family, I watched as the house went from a grand central station to a quiet haven atmosphere... which seemed to happen in a blink.  This is when the colored toilet paper turned into the simple white...not the extra fluffy, soft, quilted, or kind-to-the cheeks paper.  My parents were under some big financial stress at this time, so it was function that was important... which it did the job and we could buy large quantities of it to cut costs even more. 

Then the inevitable happened... time went on.  I went to college and got married.  On one of my visits home I noticed something very peculiar about the toilet paper... it was SOFT.  Sure enough it was not the cheap brand, butt the extra quilted, extra absorbent, and SOFT!  What a shock for me.  I quickly told my mother the discovery, fully expecting that someone gave it to her and this is what she said,  "I figure there are many pleasantries that I may not experience in life, so I figure it is worth a little extra money to have first class toilet paper."

Ha! Ha! Ha! I cannot believe my mom just related toilet paper to flying first class!  A laugh a minute... and so because of this I do buy the extra fluffy toilet paper and still smile every time I put it in my cart!  Happy Monday EVERYONE!!