HUMAN WRECKAGE

Game On!

The bathroom door isn’t ajar but the game’s afoot at the Crooked 9.

I don’t believe Ann finds me overly annoying to live with. I get things done though perhaps not as promptly as I’d promised. I don’t floss my teeth over simmering pots on the stove. I don’t clip my toenails in the dining room. I squeeze toothpaste tubes from the bottom only because Ann squeezes them from the middle but that’s an easy twice or thrice daily correction. We both make certain the cap is on when we’re done. And we agree that rolls of toilet tissue must be dispensed from the over-the-top position and not from the bottom – this is just plain common sense.

Ann has often remarked that our togetherness at this stage of our lives is “simple but complicated.” And so are the rules of our devious game. As with any human contest, the ultimate objective is victory; in our case that margin is measured in two-ply, four-inch squares. It’s so easy to change a roll of toilet paper. It takes ten seconds or less, you’re right there and there’s not much else to do.

I am a member of a music chat board based in the United Kingdom. Some years ago American singer and songwriter Sheryl Crow pronounced in the press that nobody on the planet should ever need to use more than three squares of toilet paper. A noble environmental sentiment since creatures equipped with lungs appreciate forests and trees are better left standing instead of being pulped into bleached tissue. Still, toilet paper is one heck of a modern convenience and manufactured from a renewable (albeit shrinking) resource. And as one poster speculated, it’s highly unlikely that Ms. Crow had ever consumed a curry takeaway after a night at the pub.

In our game, leaving a bare cardboard tube on the spool isn’t cricket. Skunk! Default! Game over. Cheaters never prosper. No, the strategic player will leave enough squares on the roll as to be useful to Ms Crow but not entirely useful to the average housemate. Talk about three sheets to the draft of the heating vent. Well played, Madam. As always.

Bookmarks are so 20^th century. Use that thingy on the right to sign up for e-mail alerts from meGeoff.