TP, Or Not TP: Can You Spare A Square?

Like Elaine Benes on Seinfeld once upon a time, everyone knows what it’s like to be faced with an empty toilet paper roll. Thanks to a burdened school budget, students at Texas A&M may soon face that dilemma by the thousands. I had already planned on telling this tale before my toilet paper memoir was Freshly Pressed this past week. Now a whole new generation of Aggies will be able to relate.

Texas A&M needs to save millions of dollars this year. One of the proposed solutions has been to stop stocking toilet paper in the dormitory bathrooms. This measure is expected to wipe out over $80,000 of the deficit.

In my decade and a half in higher education as a student and teacher, I’ve seen college kids do some pretty wild things for some of the simple pleasures in life such as fast food, frozen dinners, and alcohol. But they will take downright drastic steps to secure life’s necessities which to them includes toilet paper and alcohol.

Just think of how this shortage might shake up College Station, Texas. Wendy’s won’t be able to hold onto their yellow napkins. Papa John’s and Jack In The Box will have to bolt their bathrooms shut. A toilet paper black market will thrive in the heart of the Brazos Valley! Messing with Texas is bad enough. You really don’t want to mess with a Texan’s bathroom. I don’t even want to think of what might happen to textbooks filled with boring pages of useless information.

Student A: (to his roommate) Hey man, have you seen my chemistry book?

Roommate: (sliding shredded textbook behind his back) Ummm…no?

Conversations will break out across dorms just like the one Elaine had in that Seinfeld episode The Stall.

ELAINE – …umm.. I’m sorry. This is.. this is kind of embarrassing but.. there’s no toilet paper over here.

JANE – (from the stall on Elaine’s right) Are you talking to me?

ELAINE – Yeah, I just forgot to check so if you could just spare me some…

JANE – No I’m sorry.

ELAINE – What?

JANE – No I’m sorry, I can’t spare it.

ELAINE – You can’t spare it??

JANE – No there’s not enough to spare.

ELAINE – Well I don’t need much, just 3 squares will do it.

JANE – I’m sorry I don’t have a square to spare, now if you don’t mind.

ELAINE – 3 squares? you can’t spare 3 squares??

JANE – No I don’t have a square to spare, I can’t spare a square.

ELAINE – Oh is it two-ply? cause it it’s two-ply I’ll take one ply, one puny little ply, I’ll take one measly ply…

JANE – Look, I don’t have a square and I don’t have a ply (flushing and leaving).

Elaine – No no don’t, I beg you…

I’m glad she brought up two-ply because that is the topic in a great potty debate at Princeton University (Motto: “David Duchovney and Elena Kagan got crazy here in ’79”). Student government candidates recently faced off over the issue of whether or not to switch campus bathrooms from one-ply to the more plush version. If you don’t believe me check out the esteemed Daily Princetonian. For the love of F. Scott Fitzgerald (class of 1917). All the money and prestige flowing through Princeton and they’re preoccupied with bath tissue thickness. That’s what I call a sensitive issue ;-).