May 05 '01 Volume 257 Toilet Paper Mentioning The Unmentionable
I don't receive a lot of
I can't speak for the average person, but toilet paper interests me. It does not fascinate me, so think me not a weirdo or pervert. The website mentioned above has a wealth of information, and I've read only bits and pieces of it, but I find myself agreeing with many of the findings. For example, consider the preferred method of placing a roll of toilet paper on a dispenser. Do you prefer the first sheet going over the roll or under the roll? Well, surveys indicate that sixty-eight percent of the population of toilet paper users prefers the sheet coming over the top as opposed to twenty-five percent favoring under the roll rolling. Actually, I have a strong preference to take my tissue over the top. If I happen to be in a setting where the paper is on "backwards," I'll turn it around. Armed with the above facts, I feel better knowing I'm upsetting no more than twenty-five percent of the folks who like it the other way. I belong to a peculiar generation of Americans that have known what life was like prior to toilet paper being the popular item it has become in households across this land. I have had occasion to use less comfortable means than that provided by the softness of Charmin to conduct my toilet business. In my youth, when outhouses were all the rage, especially in rural areas, a variety of offerings were presented from dried corn cobs and corn shucks to newspapers and catalogs, specifically one catalog known as the "Sears, Roebuck & Co." catalog. In most of the places we lived during the oft-uprooted days of my childhood, indoor plumbing was available, but at my grandparent's house near Thaxton and once when we lived near Starkville, the outhouse or the barn were the only options. Having had to "make do" with available materials in the great outdoors, I have also used leaves. I am thankful that I have not lived in a culture so primitive that none of the above were options, but I understand a lot of people in this world have at their disposal only the means that are quite literally "at hand." According to data others have gathered on this subject, a variety of materials were used in lands and eras prior to the invention of toilet paper:
Additionally, toilet paper finds usefulness in areas other than its primary one. Survey participants reported the following: Nose Care - 61%, wiping small spills - 17%, removing makeup - 8%, cleaning mirrors - 7%, cleaning a child's hands/face - 3% (Charmin.com), also used to cover the toilet seat and to clean glasses (Source, Kimberly-Clark) This brings me to another survey question, "Other than food, if you were stranded on a desert island with only one necessity, what would you choose?" A whopping forty-nine percent of the people surveyed chose toilet paper. I doubt I would have picked toilet paper that near the top of my list, but I think it's a good choice. In the years that toilet paper has become a household word, I've experimented with various brands. I'm a "brand conscious" consumer, and when I find a brand I like, I tend to stick with it. (Maybe, I should say, "stay with it", or better yet, "I continue using it.") Brand names did matter to those surveyed. When away from home, fifty percent of those questioned preferred using a branded toilet paper, though 35% did not care which brand was offered, and the remaining 15 percent did not know how to answer the question. (Apparently, Jay Leno is not the only person capable of interviewing idiots on the street.) One of the more unusual questions sought to determine if respondents were "wadders" or "folders" of toilet paper. As late as July of last year, 40% fold or stack, 40% wad or crumple, and 20% wrap it around their hand. Gender wise, men fold 58% to women's 32%, while women crumple 52% to men's 38%. Not surprising some folks didn't know what they do with the toilet paper, 4% of the men and 3% of women. Through the years that I have been a toilet paper consumer, I’ve used various brands, colors, scents, densities, and textures, looking for the perfect toilet paper. I have found that I prefer a toilet tissue that is either quilted or embossed thus creating a "grippable" or textured surface. I’ve never cared for scented tissue, and I prefer white toilet paper. Given a choice, I’ll choose two-ply versus a single ply tissue. Don’t go out and buy my favorite brand just because you think I may one day pay you a visit, but for my personal use, I purchase the Coronet brand, manufactured by Georgia Pacific, in the 8-roll pack. The following entitled "Toilet Paper Timeline," hails from Buck Wolf's column. 1391: The King's Pleasure — Chinese emperors begin ordering toilet paper in sheets measuring 2 feet by 3 feet. 1596: The Royal Flush — Sir John Harington, a godson of Queen Elizabeth I, invents the first flushing toilet (a distinction often attributed to plumber Thomas Crapper). 1872: Kimberly Meets Clark — Charles Benjamin Clark, a 28-year-old Civil War veteran, recruits John A. Kimberly to join him in building a paper mill in Wisconsin. 1890: On a Roll — Scott Paper introduces toilet paper on a roll. But the paper goods company is somewhat embarrassed to be associated with such an "unmentionable" thing and refuses to put its name on the product. Instead, the toilet paper bears the name of intermediaries. As a result, at the turn of the century, the Waldorf Hotel in New York becomes a leader in the toilet paper business. 1916: Gas Masks Become Sanitary Napkins — Kimberly-Clark begins concentrating on a special wadding paper. With World War I brewing in Europe, this product, Cellucotton, was adapted for use as a filter in gas masks and bandages. Nurses began using it as sanitary pads. Cellucotton was renamed "Cellu-Naps," and then "Kotex." 1925: Great Scott! — Scott is recognized as the leading toilet paper company in the world. (Kimberly-Clark acquired it in 1995.) 1928: From Charming to Charmin — Hoberg paper introduces Charmin. The logo — a woman's head from a cameo pin — was designed to appeal to feminine fashions of the day. A female employee called the packaging "Charming," and the product's brand name was born. 1942: A Softer World — St. Andrew's Paper Mill in England introduces two-ply toilet paper. 1964: Enter Mr. Whipple — He appears for more than 20 years in TV, radio and print advertising. The real George Whipple was the president of the Benton & Bowles advertising agency, which came up with the "Please, don't squeeze the Charmin" ad campaign. He sold the rights to his name to Procter & Gamble for $1. Dick Wilson, the vaudeville veteran who portrayed Mr. Whipple on TV, later recalled his agent calling him about the project. "My agent asked me, 'What do you think of toilet paper?' And I told him, 'I think everybody should use it.'" For his role in making Charmin the No. 1 toilet paper in America, Wilson's salary grew to $300,000 a year, and Procter & Gamble promised him a "lifetime supply" of toilet paper. 1973: The Johnny Carson Toilet Paper Scare — Johnny Carson makes a joke about the United States facing an acute shortage of toilet paper. This prompts viewers to run out to stores and begin hoarding. Carson apologizes the next day for causing the scare and retracts his quote. 1991: Covert TP — The U.S. military uses toilet paper to camouflage its tanks in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. 1995: Bathroom Merger — Kimberly-Clark and Scott Paper join forces. A year later the company has earnings of $1.34 billion, not to mention Cottonelle, the second best-selling toilet paper. 1999: Paperless Toilet — Japanese inventors unveil the paperless toilet. The device washes, rinses and blow-dries the user's bottom with a heating element. 2000: Men Are From Folders, Women Are From Wadders — A Kimberly-Clark marketing survey on bathroom habits finds that women are "wadders" and men are "folders." Women also tend to use much more toilet paper than men. 2001: RRN Prediction — Readers will find new uses for this newsletter. Finally, if you’re wondering about consumption, consider the following: On average, consumers use 8.6 sheets per trip - a total of 57 sheets per day. That's an annual total of 20,805 sheets. (Charmin)
Forty Winks Radio Frustration After my morning shower, I could scarcely believe my eyes when I glanced at the bedroom clock and saw 1:56 on the digital dial. The red numerals appeared blurry, but that's only because I did not have on my glasses. I reached for my glasses, and they confirmed what I had managed to read with the naked eye. "The power must have gone off," I thought, reaching for my watch atop the dresser. By what seemed an uncanny coincidence, it bore the exact same time. Fifty-six minutes earlier, the radio had come on, and I had tossed in bed for about a half-hour before forcing myself out of bed and into the shower. For most of the half-hour prior to my shower, I was half awake, half asleep, and halfway listening to some talk-radio guy touting a video and story of a NASA cover up from the days of Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon. When it started to make some sense, I figured it was time to get up. Don't ask me why I didn't look at the clock when I turned off the "wake-to-music alarm." I call it that because the alarm choices are "music" or "alarm." If you could hear the buzzing alarm, you'd understand why it is set to music. Understanding why the radio dial is set on a talk radio program requires understanding my wife, which I can assure you is too complicated a subject to broach at this time, especially at the time I am writing this, 2:12 a.m., Tuesday, May 01, 2001. On the average, from the time my feet hit the bedroom floor until I have showered, dried off, applied antiperspirant, and donned my underwear, approximately twenty minutes will have passed prior to my feet returning to the bedroom for me to search for pants, socks, and shoes. On a morning after a poor night's rest, I may require an additional five minutes or so in the shower, which seems to have been the case on this particular a.m. I had not been sleepy at my normal bedtime of 10:30 p.m. the previous evening and remembering that after Rayanne rearranged my bedroom over the weekend (supposedly to make the room feel larger). I had been unable to see the clock radio on the chest of drawers near the bed without me sitting up in bed. I'm a guy that can't sleep if I don't know the time when I wake up in the middle of the night. I worry that I won't have enough time to get back to sleep before the alarm goes off, and I worry not knowing how much potential sleep time remains. It was remembering the hard to see clock radio that prompted me, shortly before 11:00 p.m. to move the radio to the dresser a few feet beyond the foot of the bed. I remember resetting the time on the clock, but I must not have checked the time of the alarm. Right now, I don't know if I had an hour's sleep before the alarm went off, or if I managed to sleep through the first hour after midnight with the radio blaring. All I know at the present is the stimulating effects of the hot shower have faded, my eyelids seem heavy, my fingers (needed to type this) are as lead weights, and I think I'll lie down again in hopes of catching perhaps twenty of my allotted forty winks before the six o'clock alarm sounds. The preceding paragraphs were composed between two and three a.m. in morning. As you may have guessed, I did not sleep well between three and six o’clock, but I did rest enough to stay awake in the all-day meeting I had to sit through at work. I can’t blame my wife for my under-sleeping, but had she spent the night with me, perhaps she would have questioned my sanity for showering at 1:30 a.m.. Yet, because she needed to be in Pontotoc to begin a new job Tuesday morning, she had driven to Pontotoc on Monday afternoon. Somehow, I had the impression that needing to finalize a few of the projects she had been working on in the Delta would require her spending an occasional night or two in Greenville, but she explained that would be quite unlikely. If she needs to be in Greenville, she informed me it would be only on weekends. Therefore, until we sell our house in Greenville, I won’t be seeing much of my wife until I get back to Pontotoc on the weekends and maybe not much then. Nonetheless, you can bet, I’ll make dang sure of the time before I step into a shower on any given morning in the near future.
Bodock Beau Bathroom Humor It seems appropriate to include some bathroom humor at the end of this newsletter. After all, the editor started it with his first article. This is about the guy that went into the toilet booth in Grand Central Station, sat down and had a bowel movement before he realized that there was no toilet paper. Luckily someone entered the adjoining booth so he called over to him and asked if he had any toilet paper over there. The reply came back, "No, there was no toilet paper". "Well, is there any newspaper over there?" "No, no newspaper over here". "How about a paper bag?" "No, no paper bag." Then after a few moments of silence - "Have you got two fives for a ten?" Thanks go to Dena Kimbrell for the following : A middle-aged woman seemed sheepish as she visited her gynecologist. "Come now," coaxed the doctor, "you've been seeing me for years! There's nothing you can't tell me." "This one's kind of strange.." "Let me be the judge of that," the doctor replied. "Well," she said, "yesterday I went to the bathroom in the morning and I heard a plink-plink in the toilet, when I looked down, the water was full of pennies." "I see." "That afternoon I went again and there were nickels in the bowl." "Uh-huh." "That night," she went on, "there were dimes and this morning there were quarters! You've got to tell me what's wrong with me!" she implored, "I'm scared out of my wits!" The gynecologist put a comforting hand on her shoulder, "There, there, it's nothing to be scared about..." "You're just going through ‘the change.’"
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emailed communiqués from my son, so
when he passed along a link to an Internet site containing the words "toilet
paper," I figured I should check it out. It turned out to be a column by
ABC's Buck Wolf in which Wolf listed some facts about toilet paper's origins,
uses, and the like. Wolf, himself, had based his findings upon facts listed
on a website devoted to toilet paper,