WARNING!!! The following blog contains content that is graphic in nature and may be deemed inappropriate by some people in our nanny state. Reader’s discretion is advised…
It’s time ladies, gentlemen and part-time A Mind of Its Own fans, we are about to embark on the shittiest blog we have written. There might be a pun or two intended there but you’ll have to read on in order for that question to be answered. Speaking of answers we’ll give you some to a couple of age old questions and if we are lucky we might even find some scientific backing to ensure that what we write isn’t just another fluff piece that people can shoot down in a ball of flames like the Hindenburg. So without further ado we’ll kick in and get on with a mummy wrapped gift.
We know the questions floating through your minds, what in the hell are the team up to now? What weird, wonderful, insightful topic are they going to bring us this week? Good bloody question it involves the creation of paper and the use for human consumption. That’s right we are heading down the dark and sordid path of toilet paper. We were going to avoid the age old debate of whether folding or scrunching was better but we’ll tackle it and while we are at it we’ll look at the old ply situation. So how did we get to this topic well we have single ply toilet paper to thank for that.
Having spent the last two weeks cooped up, driving up and down the east coast of Australia in what could only be described as a shoebox on wheels. It was safe to say there were plenty of stops at shitty rest areas where hygiene was more than questionable. Sitting on a toilet lacking a seat while wiping your arse with the equivalent of sandpaper is more than enough to get you thinking about the quality and amount of ply thats involved in what has become a regular occurrence. Furthermore after fingering your own bum a couple of times you become a little hesitant to stop and go to the bathroom without ensuring you have a bottle of hand sanitizer and baby wipes on standby. It wouldn’t hurt to have a tube of 3B cream either, we’ll explain why later.
Kind made us think of Sheldon Cooper and for those of you who don’t watch The Big Bang Theory he’s mad scientist who struggles to read emotions or have empathy, come to think of it, we know a couple of people like that. But getting back on track Sheldon has what he calls a PRK or public restroom kit and i got us thinking we need a PRK if we plan on driving and stopping to make pee pee and boom boom. His kit contains everything one would need. Toilet paper, hand sanitizer,rubber gloves, air freshener, noise-cancelling headphones, danger whistle, pepper spray, multi-language occupied sign, seat protectors, booties, a clothes pin for your nose and mirror on a stick to make sure there are no weirdos next to you. While we wouldn’t go that far some of those items will be making their way into the vehicle for public toilet stops.
So after accidentally attempting to milk our prostate and hassling a poor couple for a baby wipe to get the smell of our own feces off our fingers we sat shamefully in the car thinking about all the times we’d ended up playing with our own bum due to lack of toilet tissues between our fingers and said oraffice. Not to mention the notable lack of soap in roadside rest stops. Ideas began to flow as we brain stormed this weeks blog and it began to take shape in the form of toilet rolls. As the car ate up kilometres at a pace only acceptable to the elderly we decided to take a look into the wonderful world of toilet paper and how it’s changed our lives and made our hygiene a hell of a lot better.
It was the inventive chinese who first started using toilet paper widely in the 6th century. The first modern toilet paper was made in 1391 when it was created to meet the needs of the Chinese Emperor. It was Joseph C. Gayetty who created the first commercially packaged toilet paper in 1857. His toilet papers were loose flat sheets like you might find in restrooms, unfortunately, his invention failed and we wouldn’t get to see true commercialised toilet paper for another 12 years. The Scott Brothers founded the Scott Paper Company in 1879, it was the first toilet paper sold in rolls. It’s safe to say there were a few accidental fingers in bum holes over this period.
Not only were you at risk of fingering your own bum but up until 1935 you were also very likely to end up with a splinter from wiping your bum. We can thank Northern Tissue for inventing splinter free toilet paper. It wouldn’t be until 1942 that toilet paper became softer and we finally started to see two-ply toilet paper being sold. After two-ply came three-ply and four-ply which is now referred to as premium toilet paper. Like the great baby formula shortage in China there has also been toilet paper shortages throughout history and no doubt preppers have stocked up for the years to come once we nuke ourselves underground or the zombie apocalypse happens.
According to several blogs the great debate rages around the world and there are two types of people in the world. You are either a folder or scruncher, the debate divides nations, families and friends but who started the silly debate? We’ll answer that shortly but for now we’ll give you some patented statistics we found. It’s been proven that folders use 50 perfect less toilet paper overall than scrunchers. Not to point fingers at anyone, but men on average are mostly folders with the statistics being 52 percent, as opposed to 38 percent of women. On the other end, 52 percent of women are scrunchers, with only 38 percent of men scrunching or “wading” their toilet paper in a bunch.
As we looked into the folding and scrunching situation we also came across another raging shitty debate. Over and under, what’s the correct way to hang toilet paper. How did we come to debate so many things involving toilet paper. People who hang the loose end of the toilet paper roll cite a variety of reasons for doing so, including:
- It wastes less toilet paper. Hanging the loose end over the roll gives you more control over where the toilet paper gets torn, which can result in less wasted toilet paper.
- The end is easier to locate. With the end on top, it’s easier to find the end of the toilet paper and grab hold of it.
- It’s easier to fold the end of the toilet paper in a decorative way. Hotel bathrooms everywhere would suffer if the end of the toilet paper couldn’t be folded decoratively.
- You’re less likely to scrape your hand on the germy bathroom wall behind the toilet paper roll. This is a critical public health and safety issue.
Are we a society obsessed with debating stupid things like whether to scrunch or fold or hang it over or under and how many ply is too much ply. Wow that’s a lot of crap, a heck of a lot of crap that we debate and argue about with friends and family and for what? At the end of the day we all use toilet paper, well most of us… There are still several middle eastern cultures that don’t wipe their bums and still poo into a pit dug in the corner of their house. It shouldn’t really matter how we hang it, whether we fold or scrunch or how many ply we decide. It all comes down to personal preference right?
Toilet paper like a lot of things in life comes with choices and like all things in life we get to make those choices. Do you go for the single ply and wrap your hand like a mummy only finger your own bum hole cheap option or the 4-ply block your drains, wipe your arse with a pillow? Furthermore do you fold and use less paper or scrunch and just create paper mache lining for your pipes. Hang it over or under on the roll. There are so many decisions we can make that it’s no wonder the topics have divided households and nations throughout history. Heck the Chinese royals who started the whole using toilet paper to clean your bum probably argued over whether to fold or scrunch. We aren’t sure whether it came in rolls back then but they would have argued about that as well.
It’s versatile piece of equipment if you really think about it, aside from wiping your bum, toilet paper can be used as a tissue or to soak up spills in the bathroom, generally from someone with bad aim who can’t hit the bowl from 30 centimeters away knows alot about the absorbent qualities of it. The toilet rolls are used to create anything a child can set their mind to daycare. To put it lightly kids have used it to create mess and chaos for centuries. Want to annoy your neighbour teepee their yard or set toilet paper on fire and ring the doorbell before sprinting off while giggling. You think of it and no doubt someone has tried to do it or create it with toilet paper. It is in fact a very versatile tool whether its scrunched, folded, torn, twisted or set alight.
Whatever your choices around the bog roll they are yours and yours alone, the only thing we can say is folders use less toilet paper only weirdos stand up to wipe their bums, it’s always over never under and don’t skimp on quality you tight arses. No one likes a papercut in their butt crack from using sandpaper single ply. Throw in the burning ring of fire and you’ve got a not so nice combination of ring sting and papercut sting. So do yourself a favour and pay a little extra otherwise you’ll be like the intrepid hikers who needed to lube up their cheeks with 3B cream to stop chafe or you’ll just end up with a finger up your bottom that you didn’t really want there in the first place… Or did you? No judgement we’ve all seen road trip and if you haven’t we urge you to do so. We are sure it’ll be on Netflix, Stan or one of the other streaming services.
As we close another chapter of hilarity and surprise cavity searches, we hope you’ve found the answers to the great debate. The answer as always is, you do you no matter what anyone else says to you or tries to make you think. All decisions in life, bum hygiene included is up to you and solely you. Unless you aren’t old enough to wipe your own arse then the decision is out of your hands and chances are you’ll end up taking on your parents view down the like whether to fold or scrunch and how the toilet paper is hung. Anyway, enough of this crap for another week, we achieved what we came here to do and that was waste another couple of minutes of your time filling your mind with questions and wonder. By the time you’ve finished reading this you’ll be asking yourself all the important paper questions.
So we sign off and say goodbye but never farewell for there are many important questions still to be answered. Many more a topic that no one wants to talk about and many more nipples to be freed from oppression both male and female it’s just more socially acceptable to see male nipple than it is female. Again we have gone off topic and for that we apologise. Until next week adios amigos! And remember YOLO and you do you just not on your mums good towels…
A Mind of its Own... 