Duped by One-Ply

Have you ever felt tricked by a product? Let me tell you, it makes one feel like a sucker. A Dum Dum, specifically. For example, there's last month's moldy cheese I unsealed one day after purchase and three months before its expiration. It must not have been packaged correctly, but I still felt like a fool for not noticing the green fuzz building up under the translucent plastic. I threw the $3.68 purchase away, vowing to check cheese bags more thoroughly in the future.

Here's a little pertinent fun making its way around the internet.

More painful are those purchases which remind one repeatedly of having been duped. Such as the one-ply toilet paper I inadvertently bought two weeks ago. Every time I sit down and peel off a thin layer of the tissue, I am reminded of Scott's trickery.

Here's the thing: I don't think it was purely accidental.

Toilet paper was on my shopping list, so when I came to a large display on the end of a grocery aisle, I considered myself fortunate. I could get 20 double rolls of toilet paper for less than $10. In my mind--at that time, but no longer!--Scott was a good, thick, comfy brand. And I wouldn't have to comparison shop all the competing T.P.s down the length of the aisle. What luck! I'd save money and time. I glanced at the packaging, confirmed that I was buying quilted toilet paper, and set the extra large bundle in my cart.

Behold the stitching-esque quilting printed on the packaging--my downfall!

It was good timing, too, because our storage was fresh out of toilet paper, and I used the end of the current roll that night. I installed the replacement Scott roll and wenivet peacefully to bed in my naive bliss.

The dark of early morning revealed my mistake. When I woke at 6:00 a.m. to start my day by emptying my bladder, I was dismayed to discover the aforementioned thin layers of toilet paper. I swear Scott found a way to make its paper half as thick as a human hair. I wondered if my mind had played tricks on me at the store, but the light of the sunrise showed that I was sane and it was a corporation toying with me.

Shadowy rolls lurking in deceptive packaging.

Just look at the packaging. Scott didn't use clear plastic to bundle its rolls like other manufacturers. Theirs was coated in white, so that only shadows of sturdy rolls showed through. I verified again the picture of quilted toilet paper. As you know, there is no such thing as quilted one-ply. The picture distracted me in and I unsuspectingly failed to read the description, which did mention in small font that I was buying one-ply paper. Had I seen that detail, you can bet I would have become suspicious, and would then head down the tissue aisle for honest toilet paper wrapped in clear plastic.

As it is, I'm just hanging onto this bulk package for emergency storage. It's not even good for toilet papering someone's house. Such thin tissue would just be mean. So now I'm 12 days into this first roll of one-ply, and I do have to admit that it lasts a long time, which I guess will be adequate for the apocalypse. That's the only thing that will make me use the other 19 rolls. Which leads me to the silver lining I'm creating. When I unrolling a yard of one ply to quadruple up for any toileting job, I think of the scene in Dances With Wolves where the illiterate soldier wipes his bum with Lieutenant Dunbar's journal pages. That is a writer's nightmare. I'm therefore thankful to have an eternity's worth of one-ply so I won't have to ruin perfectly good literature when the (bleep) hits the fan.

Noooo...not the book!

Truly though, when the end comes and stores no longer stock toilet paper--or, for that matter, anything--use whatever you need to stay fresh, cheese bags!