Shared Bathroom, USA – Propped upon the proudly mounted cardboard carcass of a formerly plump roll of bathroom tissue, yet another fast-diminishing roll is losing hope that it will ever replace its predecessor on the available spool.
It was not a month ago, maybe 3 AM, when the fresh fat bundle of double-ply joy was cut from its hermetically sealed 12-pack litter and lazily placed onto a brown tube–to which a single square of pulpy Charmin stubbornly clung: the very cardboard tube that the newborn roll had, only moments before, witnessed spinning with grace and purpose as it was eagerly undressed of its final layers of life–by a sleepy flesh-god called, “Trevor.”
Trevor’s seemingly insatiable appetite for unraveling, and subsequently swaddling around his hand the delicate butt-gauze–before firmly swiping his undercarriage to gently yet effectively remove all traces of fecal matter–was thwarted when the final piece tore away, like flesh from a bone.
It was at this moment that our presently-waning cylinder was drafted for doodie-duty. It was late; everyone was exhausted. That’s what the newly-enlisted bundle of toilet kleenex assured itself. The unspoken promise was implied after all–not only by the retired roll’s fate but by the ease with which the bathroom baton could have been passed: no more than an eight-inch fall to the overflowing wastebasket below, right? Nonesuch luck.
Trevor came and went, day in, day out, and has yet to express any intent to install. The only glimmer of hope has been an occasional moonlit silhouette of a visitor who stares, puzzled, at the unmounted roll: perhaps he’ll lift it and playfully compress the spring-loaded plastic spool, but he inevitably sighs as he sets it back down and shakes his head as if to say: “Not today.”
Whether this reckless inaction is a passive-aggressive thumb war between roommates or mere laziness, one thing is clear: it’s at the expense of a once-hopeful roll of toilet paper, watching as its life is literally flushed away–before it ever had a chance to feel the thrill of being fastened to the fast spinny thing on the wall.
