Happy Birthday to my Mom! I’m sorry I’m going to share a potty story on your special day!
I was changing the toilet paper today at school for a little boy who needed some ‘alone time’ and had a little flashback. When I was a little kid and needed to ….. sit for a while, I would play with the toilet paper holder.
Seriously, you’re little – you don’t think to plan ahead and bring a comic book, what else is there to do?
It was an old-school metal kind, not like the ridiculous plastic ones of today. It had some heft to it, with a serious metal spring inside that was hard to compress, but I did it anyway until it would spring across to the bathtub – only to be fetched much, much later.
That left the two pieces to put together endlessly. You could put them together the normal way, only now there was no spring inside, so it would become super-small. The air would puff out as the pieces were pushed together, and then you had to be kind of patient pulling them apart because there was a bit of a vacuum. Or, you could combine them same-ends-together and then there was the thrilling danger of sticking your finger inside the hollow end to pull them apart.
This is a ‘terrible memory’ because it’s sad that I got such joy out of a toilet paper holder. It’s also sad that I remember it so vividly and so fondly. It’s sad because I should have just eaten more fiber and I would have been in and out of the bathroom quicker.
Happy Birthday, Mom. I apologized for this already, right?