gullybogan

Dear Reader,

There was a bit of a kerfuffle in one of the antisocial networks i occasionally haunt, over the matter of the correct way to mount a roll of toilet paper.

Some said the flap should lie over the front of the roll, and others said that it should run down the wall side.

As someone with OCD, i am more than happy to tell you the right way to mount a roll of toilet paper.

Flap over the front of the roll.

Do you really want it running down the wall? Picking up all those toilet wall germs?

*shudder*

Now that that’s settled, let me tell you about the other thing that’s giving me the shits about toilet paper: how much to use.

Dunny

Me, i grew up in a town without … what do you call it? Pipes that the shit goes down, whatever that’s called.

We had a man come at dawn on a Tuesday morning, collect our big bucket of shit and piss, and then leave us an empty one.

It was a mutually beneficial arrangement: he got to empty our bodily wastes at the tip, and we got to live in the middle ages.

So, for almost all of my childhood and half of my teenage years, i had to go to the toilet by perching over a big bucket of stale piss and shit.

You could see in, see the contents, and then add your own.

About Monday night, the bucket would be nearly full. Dropping a turd into that vile mixture could result in… splashback.

Splashback

So yes, if it wasn’t getting bitten on the penis by a hidden-under-the-toilet-seat redback spider that you had to worry about, it was getting your penis doused with a stew of your family’s sewage.

Gee, it was lucky that i didn’t have OCD back then! I don’t know how i would have coped.

But once you’ve been splashed on the dick by a cold shit-and-urine cocktail once or twice, you start to take precautions.

I used to put a layer of toilet paper over the contents before adding my own, to try to minimise splashage.

This worked quite well, but the next visitor could see that i’d done this, and i used to get told off for wasting toilet paper.

My complaints about splashback were to no avail.

Flushing toilets were a deliverance from this nightmare.

I still didn’t like the threat of splashback from one, even if it was only my own urine that i would be wearing, so i still did a little layer. Happily, the pipes were capacious, and it all flushed away, leaving no trace of my neurosis.

Flush

Fast forward, though, to the twentyfirst century, where toilets have pipes slightly narrower than the wrist of the delicate kid who always had a note to excuse him from doing PE.

Add also the half flush.

Now, if you layer the toilet bowl, you’re just as likely to end up with needing to plunger the thing to get it to flush down.

Need i say that puddling about in a papier mache of your own shit and urine is not recommended OCD behaviour.

The final insult to this tiny-pipe/quarter-cup-flush tyranny is a new invention designed to help children learn how much toilet paper to use.

Lab-controlled Doses

The roll is printed with paw prints, and a picture of a labrador puppy, about every four sheets.

Princess bought this – she grew up with flushing toilets – to try to stop me inexplicably going through so much paper.

« Great. So how many puppies are you meant to use to wipe your arse? »

« How many! Just the one, how many do you think? »

I tore off four sheets and scrunched up the tiny strand of paper.

« There is no way that this is enough to wipe an adult human arse. »

We then had a lovely chat about the comparative sizes and requirements of adult human arses, including some rather personal observations that do not really need to be reproduced here.

We haggled around until we agreed on three puppies.

« So, three puppies a wipe, then, » i said, just to clarify.

« A WIPE? » Princess emitted, seeking further clarification. « Three puppies PER VISIT, i *think* you mean. »

I explained how that would not work out, and we arranged a further meeting to thrash out the finer details of this new understanding on toilet paper utilisation.

I plan on bringing up – under ‘business arising’ on the agenda at that meeting – a discussion about how many puppies i can use to layer the bowl.

My ambit claim will be… two.

Yours,
Gullybogan