Several weeks ago, much to my chagrin, Ang ran out of toilet paper at her place. To me, this situation is inconceivable. Toilet paper is like food (though I wouldn't recommend you eat it, particularly that which has already been used) in that it is a staple of life itself. Actually let me clarify -- toilet paper is a staple of civilized life. Without toilet paper, we are left to spin jagged, dry pine cones about in our sphincters or scrub ourselves madly with pages ripped from the Russian bride section of the Sears catalog circa 1928. At least catalog pages were absorbent and non-glossy back then. If you actually still received the Sears catalog, you might as well be pawing at your muddy crack with a cellophane wrapper off a Werther's from grandpa's candy bowl. Surely this would lead to a breakdown of what few wispy tendrils of reason remain clinging to our shriveling orbitofrontal cortexes. So here we are, peering down from the crumbling edge of sanity without a shred of shit tissue to be found.

Of course, because my intestines are constantly listening, just waiting for that chance to leap into overdrive at the most inopportune time, as soon as I realized we had almost made our way through the last roll of toilet paper, I was immediately seized with the Vulcan nerve pinch squeezing 10 feet of my intestines into a wad of dirty meat the size of a pecan. I couldn't waste time running down the street looking for sweet, sweet absorbent phone books. I had to unburden my bucking mule and fast. I ran to the bathroom, jumping over Ang, the cat, and a bag lady with a shopping cart, dropped my shorts, and pushed out a thick, sputtering cloud of rank hunter green pea soup, ham chunks and all. It all happened so fast that by the time I finished, it was 2 hours earlier. But now it was time for the recovery effort. "Ang! Can you bring me the roll of paper towel?" Surprisingly, it only took a few sheets and 8 flushes, but my ass was now Bounty clean.

The next day, I arrived at Ang's place, took a leak, and found that she had not yet purchased any toilet paper. I was perplexed. In the two hours between the time she gets home, and I arrive after work, surely she could have bought some toilet paper, right? No. She forgot. HOW CAN YOU FORGET TOILET PAPER?!? You use it to clean nasty shit from your ass! To make matters worse, of course, I had to shit. With just a couple sheets of paper towel left, I had little choice but to take the risk and sat down for the blowout. Fortunately it was far more rigid of a dump than the previous day's leavings, but it soon became clear that the two sheets of paper towel weren't going to cut it. I would have to hop in the shower and do a manual extraction. Once I was finished, had washed my hands with battery acid and an acetylene torch, and dried myself off, I knew that I would have to take matters into my own hands. And I wasn't talking about my freshly expelled fecal matter.

Over lunch the following day, one of my coworkers wanted to stop at a convenience store to pick up a couple of things on the way back to work, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to pick up some ass wipe. I expected to walk out with a forty dollar 4-pack of Charmin, but all they had were single, individually wrapped rolls for sale. I figured one would be enough to get us by until we made a supermarket run, so I plunked down my cash for some shit smear, a bag of peanut M&Ms, and a Diet Pepsi, and we headed back to work. Not surprisingly, that night I opened the toilet paper to find it was the equivalent of wax butcher paper with sand and glitter glued to it. And it was so thin you had to unfurl about 20 feet of paper to get the equivalent of a single sheet of name brand paper. Yet the roll never seemed to get smaller. Days passed, and we bought a huge family pack of toilet paper, but the roll of awful gas station toilet paper just stayed the same size. At my house we went through roll after roll, week after week, but the stubborn roll gas station toilet paper at Ang's WOULD NOT DIE! Eventually I took to wasting it on purpose. I used it to towel off after showers, made a pair of pants out of it, and used some to replace the cat's food for a few days. It shrank by maybe a couple of millimeters in diameter. Finally, almost a month after I purchased gas station toilet paper, today the last sheet was torn from the cardboard tube. We rejoiced and spent the afternoon rubbing ourselves with single sheets of Charmin as thick as a fire blanket.

As long and as daunting as the nightmare roll of toilet paper was, we learned an important lesson in economy this past month. Yes, we have been trying our mightiest to be far more cautious with our money lately, and yes, this was a step too far in thrift. But it's good to know that if we ever fall on hard times, we can buy 6 months worth of toilet paper for $2 at the gas station. And with all of that cheap, greasy food we'd be eating, we'd probably need every sheet. I wonder if truck stop restroom condoms are as good of a deal?