The Leaning Tower of TP

I was very careful to insure that circumstances did not warrant a retraction to the Friday Favorites like last week, but I do feel it necessary to add a note, a humorous anecdote to the items pictured as David's favorites.

Last night I went to a party, a small book club.  Instead of having thoughts focused on Pride and Prejudice, the month's chosen selection which miraculously I had found the time to read, I was instead pondering whether or not I could ask my hostess for a parting gift--a roll or two of toilet paper--or if it would be better to try to sneak them out of the house in my bag.

Since the hostess was my sister, I managed to find the words and left the house with not only the requested two rolls, but an entire six pack of Charmin.  Score.

We were experiencing a toilet paper emergency in our house and I must state in my own defense that it was not due to poor planning.

One of David's favorite things pictured earlier was a toilet paper tower comprised of exactly thirteen rolls.  It has been sitting in the middle of our family room for over a week.  A few days ago, I disassembled the tower while David was at school, but he had not been in the house five minutes before he became agitated by the tower's disappearance and the rebuilding effort began.

Yesterday, I devised a new strategy.  I would simply remove one tier of the tower, leaving an 11 roll tower and giving me the ability to replenish the paper in two of our bathrooms until our weekly trip to Costco tomorrow.

Having detected the TP tower security breach earlier in the week, David was on high alert.  He spied the missing rolls within thirty seconds and started calling, "Twelve and thirteen!  Twelve and thirteen!"  So, the tower has been rebuilt again and apparently will remain a fixture in our family room until David decides that it is time to move on to, who knows, plastic cutlery?  Garden hoses?

Once again, David has thrown me a curveball.  To whatever that magic number is, that minimum number of TP rolls below which you should never allow yourself to fall, I need to remember to add 13.

I had underestimated the importance of the toilet paper tower to David.  And David, in turn, had underestimated the importance of un-towered toilet paper to the remaining members of our family.