I should have known something was up when I started getting apologetic emails from a toilet paper company.
I never think about toilet paper much, except if it’s not there when I expect it and I got to duck walk into the next room and grab a Kleenex.
I know my sister-in-law Gloriosa got a strict rule about how to hang it. The part you pull HAS to be away from the wall. So it won’t get wall dirt on it, I guess.
But there are other people – like my mother-in-law, who say just as strongly that the part you pull has to be AGAINST the wall. That way it won’t be easy to put one end in the toilet and just keep flushing, like certain little kids she personally gave birth to have done.
Me, I can see both sides.
But these emails are from a actual toilet paper company that seems to think it’s offended me. For purposes of not getting sued, I will not give its real name. I will call it “the business.”
First “the business” asks what I like about its toilet paper. What can I say? It performs a necessary job without complaining? I ignore it. I got Wordle to play.
But then “the business” acts like I answered, and it says it’s sorry I think it uses too much glue on the ends of the rolls, but its research says it is necessary. Do I have any other problems? I remember one time, when I was raising my kids, I was on the toilet and desperate and I remembered somebody had T-P’ed our house the night before. So I yelled for somebody to go out and pull some out of a tree. It was nice and damp and soft. I can’t hardly complain about THAT.
Next, “the business” emails me it has a special on roll-holder extenders if I want to invest in an Andre the Giant-size roll of toilet paper. It promises this extender is easy to install with only basic tools. “No need to get a sophisticated installer.”
I never met a sophisticated installer for toilet paper holder extenders, but I am glad my son ain’t in that profession. I’d probably lie and say he was a dentist.
By now I am getting suspicious. Somebody put “the business” onto me. And who do I know that cares that much about toilet paper?
Somebody who cares which way her toilet paper roll is hung, that’s who. My sister-in-law Gloriosa or my mother-in-law, who don’t use email.
The next day I drop by Gloriosa’s house for coffee and happen to use the bathroom, and look under the sink and YES, she got rolls and rolls of toilet paper from “the business.”
So I ask her what all this is about. Wellll, she blusters around a little and finally admits she had a grievance with “the business” – they use too much glue at the end of each roll to make you use extra squares, she says, in a very angry voice – and when you think of the thousands – no millions – of extra squares everybody uses, “the business” makes A LOT of money.
So she wrote them – but she told them to write back at her “work” email, which was mine, so they wouldn’t figure out who she was.
“I am working under cover,” Modine, she says.
“You didn’t want their emails,” I say.
I tell her to write them people and tell them not to use her “work address” no more or I will blow her cover.
I must have sounded like I meant it, because she says she will.
“I am thinking about buying a bidet anyway,” she says.
Well. I act like I know all about bidets, even though I never personally been squirted by one.
I tell her my advice is, before she pays a lot of money to a bidet company, to first of all buy one of them “super squirt” guns and put it near the toilet—check out how it works.
When I leave, she thanks me and says that sounds like a good idea.
Hah! I hope she gets one that blasts 30 feet. Serve her right.
