When shopping for items, I tend to buy whichever product brand that happens to be on sale, and so I've tried dozens of different toilet papers over the years. And, of course, I've defecated many times in bathrooms for which someone else has provided the toilet paper, and so I've experienced even more kinds of toilet paper than I've purchased.
The various brands of toilet paper vary greatly in terms of texture, ranging from the soft and pillowy and fluffy to the coarse and stiff and dense. Public restrooms are usually supplied with the coarser, stiffer, denser paper, whereas I often encounter the softer, fluffier, and more pillowy paper in the bathrooms of friends and relatives.
I prefer the coarse, stiff, dense toilet paper. This is because I've found that the fluffy toilet paper often tatters and turns powdery when subjected to friction. I want my feces to adhere to my toilet paper, and the last thing I need is for my toilet paper to be adhering to my feces.
People have told me, "Il Vermicello, the purpose of toilet paper is not merely to faciliate adhesion but also to facilitate comfort," but I've never really understood these people. I, for one, have never used any toilet paper that was so soft or so fluffy that it made wiping myself in any way pleasant or soothing. Conversely, I've had to wipe myself plenty of times with newspapers or grocery bags or the Yellow Pages, and it really isn't all that bad.
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I agree with your general point -- that fluffy TP is more apt to "leave pieces behind," as those cute little Charmin bears say.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I have two related issues: One is when I encounter the industrial-sized rolls that are impossible to turn because the roll is so heavy / the paper is too thin. I end up with tiny little pieces tearing off, over and over again. It's like being really hungry but only being allowed to have a nibble of food. Except the analogy applies to shit and TP, not hunger and food.
The other issue: Why can we not get over our collective discomfort in talking about toilet paper? Why do we have to have little animated bears, or other cartoons, or silly demonstrations of TP that can cradle a bowling ball.
Whatever your word of choice, it's intended for poop. Doo-doo, feces, kaka, dumps, loads, shit, poo. Everyone poops (as delightfully illustrated by Taro Gomi), and no one (to my knowledge) wants the remnants of their poop to remain near their anus for any extended period of time. So let's just get real, stop saying things like "bath tissue," and have a serious and collective conversation about the effectiveness of shit wipes. We'd be better off for it.
Yeah, those impossible-to-turn, industrial-sized rolls enrage me. I no longer even try to get a reasonably sized piece of paper off of one of those monsters. Fumbling around for little scraps and ribbons is a frustrating waste of my time. Now I just go straight for the toilet-seat covers (if you fold 'em just right then they work pretty well). As for all of the squeamishness and the euphemisms around the poop and our desire to clean off the poop, I think it's ridiculous. In real life, I'll bet those little bear cubs'd be covered in all kinds of shit...buncha little furry fuckin' shitballs, if you ask me. In fact, all of nature is mostly shit. There's water and elements and some minerals, and everything else is basically made out of shit.
ReplyDeleteDiscourse is indeed the great vehicle of learning.
ReplyDelete