Let Me Roll It

I had just settled back on to my comfy chair to watch the rest of a Formula One car race when a heard a voice reverberate through the hall, “Who put the toilet paper roll in backwards?” I sat for a moment churning this question through my mind, going through the various machinations of how it was even possible to put a roll of toilet paper in backwards. I didn’t have to wait long as my daughters head popped into the TV room and said, “Was it you?” I stopped with mouth half open and a fistful of greasy potato chips in my hand and looked over at her. To be honest, I have never really been confronted with this sort of accusation before and I stammered a bit before I did admit that it possibly, maybe, could have been, might have been me. I thought I was doing a grand gesture to even remember to put a new roll of toilet paper in the holder in the first place. How mistaken I was. She fixed me with a look that was a combination of exasperation and pity; of all the things she could have inherited from her mother, it would have to have been that look. “Dad, the toilet paper has to come over the top of the roll and hang down.” My only response to this was, “Really?” followed quickly by, “People worry about this sort of thing?” She told me that this was the way they do things at all the four star hotels. I thought about all the hotels that she has stayed at over the years and said,” I don’t think the Super 8 out by Pearson really qualifies as a four star hotel.” I then discovered that she had also inherited that other look that her mother gives me; the one that scares me. “Dad! Don’t you know anything?” Well, anyone who knows me, knows I know a lot of stuff. However, it is stuff that isn’t particularly important or necessary to get you through life. I can blather on and on about a variety of little known facts, but I had never in all my experience or reading ever, ever heard of a proper way to hang a toilet paper roll. In fact, I think I am one of the few who knows and practices the somewhat European etiquette of turning the tines of your fork down when you have finished your meal to signify that you are finished and do not want another serving. So hitting me with this new toilet paper formality was a bit of an eye opener.

But I really shouldn’t have been too shocked at this. The path to the toilet roll standard had been set a few months ago when I was informed that the new policy in the household was not to have folded towels, but instead they needed to be rolled and placed in a basket in the bathroom. This poor old dog was getting exposed to a snoutful of new tricks. It has taken me over half my life just to finally fold towels and put them in a closet in the first place... what next, I thought, roll my dress shirts? Separate my laundry? I did innocently ask what we were supposed to do with the towel racks now that they weren’t used to hold towels. I was told that I could do a physically impossible thing with them. Showing the wisdom acquired over years of self preservation, I declined to follow up on that line of questioning.

I finally ask my daughter what brought on all these changes. I laughingly told myself that they must have done an etiquette episode on “The Simpsons” as that seemed to be the educational stream of choice for my kids. Their knowledge of my music, history and pop culture have been learned through these yellow skinned people so it wouldn’t have surprise me if they somehow made Bart into some sort of cartooned Emily Post, that doyen of manners and etiquette. Well, it turned out it was a TV show, but not the Simpsons. Apparently, there are scores of people now on television that are redefining the conventions that we have all lived with, upsetting the applecart along the way and making life for old dogs very confusing. It is almost that they endeavor to change things just for the sake of changing things. But I guess they are no different than most television networks. Some chase news, some chase headlines and some chase style.

I don’t mind change, I embrace it at times. Even with all of these changes, I was coping with everything, not really noticing these slight alterations, well, until the toilet roll confrontation. But from all that I know of the growth of any civilization, the path to the betterment of society on the whole, is through change.

However, I am lost when it comes to how we can advance our society by having a correct way to hang toilet paper. Unless, of course some tyrant from a third world nation reaches for his toilet paper and finds it hanging underneath the roll and as a result decides to invade a country. Now, that would be news… and a reason to correctly hang toilet paper.