The Paper Trail

For reasons which are about to become apparent, I am going to go into as little detail as possible about this situation.

When Fred was in college, he lived in an apartment with three other guys. None of these young men were particularly responsible and often neglected to buy items for the apartment such as paper towels, dishwasher detergent, hand soap and, worst of all, toilet paper.

In fact, they would never buy toilet paper. They would sometimes steal it from the dorms across the street when there was a box of it sitting out in the lobby. However, this box was often either guarded or not present (side note: this was still unacceptable because the rolls of TP from the dorm were the ones that are about a foot in diameter and do not fit in standard toilet paper holders like the one in their bathroom, ergo it had to sit on the floor which was disgusting).

At one point, it had been about 2 weeks since the toilet paper had run out and no one was making any effort to replenish the supply. I would just walk back to my apartment any time I had to go.

Fred, on the other hand, came up with his own method of handling this problem. It involved using either notebook paper or magazines. He had a special art to it, but I am not talking about that.

After awhile, it became tedious to keep walking back to my place, so I started carrying my own TP in my handbag. This was also a good idea since a lot of the bars I went to would run out in the middle of the night.

One morning I was over at Fred’s place when he got up and announced that he was going to the bathroom. I wasn’t paying much attention (I was hung-over) until I heard him rummaging through my handbag. I immediately sat up and asked him what the hell he was doing. He explained that he was getting TP. I was pissed. I told him there was no way in hell I was letting him use it and that he needed to march his fat ass to the store and buy his own roll. I was sick of having to even carry it around. He shrugged and went to the bathroom and presumably used a magazine. He continued to do this for a few more weeks until I finally told his mother and she flipped out at him.

To this day, I am still absolutely disgusted that he would continue to not buy toilet paper for months because the fact that he could just use alternate methods for free. This is the epitome of cheapness. I have never, in my life, seen anything as stingy as this.