How I roll

Surely no more obvious words can be spoken than these: each and every one of us is extraordinary in our own way. And I submit to all of you that one unusual, if not terribly exciting trait about me is this: I consume far less toilet paper than my fellow humans.

This became apparent to me a few months ago when I was living in Hamburg with a fellow named William. It was one of those living situations where we were both quite busy, so we rarely saw each other at home. In fact, the only impact he seemed to have on the atmosphere of the apartment were the occasional friendly chat, and the extraordinarily rapid depletion of toilet paper.

Yes, I couldn't help but notice that every couple of mornings, I woke up, strolled into the john, and found an empty cardboard roll (I could write a whole other post on why, in the name that all is holy, people don't replace the motherfucking roll, but one rant at a time). I didn't have a lot going on then, so I started thinking about it. In order to document this rather confounding discovery, I decided I would take one picture a day of the toilet paper roll. So what you see below is a series of three pictures, starting right after I changed to a new one.

That's right, we blew through an entire roll in about two days.

At the time, I kept track of how much I used - I averaged six squares a day (morning movement, plus a few nose blows). That means that I used a total of 12 squares of the entire roll. I can't tell you what percentage of the roll that is because I don't know how many squares were on a roll... but I know it ain't much.

So I guess the obvious questions here are: What the fuck? And of course JFC Dan, how could anybody use that much toilet paper? And the answer from me is a flabbergasted yet firm I don't know. The only thing I can think of is that homeboy must have been using the wad method, or had some serious swamp gut going on. But given his good spirits on the (admittedly rare) occasions I saw him, I'd say his lower GI was fine. So he must have been wadding like there's no tomorrow. Was it some sort of asshole paranoia? Or was it just bad form?

For the record, here's the way I do it:

1. Pull off a contiguous piece containing three squares of TP.

2. Fold into the center, thereby creating a single square that's three squares thick.

3. Fold in half.

4. Wipe.

5. Reverse fold, so the used side is now the inside, and the outside is fresh.

6. Wipe.

If there's more wiping needed, repeat the process using two squares instead of three (unless it's disaster conditions down there, then it's okay to use three again).

I go once a day, and I'd say that I average four wipes per session. That means I'll typically use 3 + 2 squares, for a total of 5. Once in a while it's 3 + 3 + 2, or 8. Sometimes it's just 3.

This all came up again in my new place. When my roommate and I got here, there was a roll in the bathroom, leftovers from the previous tenants. I think I used about ten squares of that, and then suddenly it was gone. Then we switched to paper towels until roommate went out and bought what I think was a two roll pack. We're done with that now, and we're back to paper towels. We started with a roll and a half of paper towels, and now I think there are four left. I've switched to my personal (and safely hidden) stash facial tissues.

We've only been here two weeks.

WTF?