Over. And Done With

It seems like the fine folks who make Cottonelle toilet paper are a little late to the party. About six years late, to be more precise, to the party that I hosted and closed with a definitive bang. You see, back on December 7, 2003, the now-defunct Cleveland Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine published an essay I wrote extolling the absolute correctness of the top-down method of toilet paper deployment and debunking unequivocally the from-the-bottom method. Now the Cottonelle people are promoting a worldwide debate on the subject, using the less exact terms "over" and "under." An apt subject for debate, but really, Cottonelle, I settled this tissue issue years ago; you might as well have a debate about VHS and Beta. Nevertheless, I feed the need to be heard from again on this crucial subject, so here is my original essay.

I'm a top-down (TD) guy. Have been for years, obsessively so. I can tolerate from-the-bottom (FTB) people, but I put them in the category of the Eternally Suspicious, along with self-professed vampires and Art Modell apologists.

It's such a quick and foolproof litmus test, not only of someone's personality but of his or her character, soul even. Just head into a person's bathroom and look at the toilet paper roll: If the toilet paper unspools from the top down, you know the person is all right; from the bottom up, well, be cautious.

For purely practical reasons, there is no choice. TD is much more efficient and correct. Gravity is dependable, so why not utilize it? TD allows for one easy revolution of the roll to find the end. The unspooling is natural. FTB, especially if your roll is thick-ply, often results in frustrating spins, spins and more spins to find that elusive free end. Dawdling time is over when you make the move for the paper; to waste additional time trying to remove some paper from the roll is an insult to one's intelligence.

Undoubtedly, the paper that faces you coming off a TD roll is the money side, the proper side. What comes at you FTB, though it might seem appropriate, is the backside. Whether you're an obsessive folder of the TP or a reckless clumper, FTB people still end up with the side that unspools. How silly to use the wrong side for your business. It's like using the other side of sandpaper to sand, the other side of the knife to cut, the other side of the cigarette to smoke.

But TP unspooling is more than just a practical matter, more than just a conundrum for Heloise; it encompasses Emily Post and moves well beyond into Nietzschean, heaven or hell territory, and further into the existential milieu of plain or peanut--are you cool or uncool, is the ultimate question.

Now you might think the unnatural, against-the-grain FTB people are the cool ones in their iconclastic regard for TP, but, really, is there anything sadder than a nonconformist who nonconforms when it comes to silly things? I mean, let's face it, as valuable as it is, TP is a pretty silly thing. People who willfully put their TP on the springy spindle the wrong way are like those people who actually have a preference for a particular brand of bottled water. Nice try, would-be rebels.

TD people are comfortable in their identity, comfortable with nature, comfortable with the idea of convenience. Cool is nothing if not comfortable. FTB people are ornery, combative and let's-turn-this-molehill-into-a-mountain types.

Just as I enjoy parking really close to those people who willfully take up two parking spaces to protect their oh-so-precious vehicles, I love righting the wrongs of misguided TP spoolers. Be it a public restroom or a close friend's private throne room, I always take the opportunity of a visit to fix a FTB roll. It ain't exactly superhero work, but I firmly believe it's the little acts of kindness that truly make this world a better place. I'm just trying to do my part.

In the interest of journalistic integrity, however, I recently made the effort to put the shoe on the other foot. I actually put a recent roll of TP on FTB. I felt like Rush Limbaugh at a single-mothers consciousness-raising potluck vegan dinner: totally out of sorts.

There was no avant-garde thrill of breaking the social compact. There was no Emersonian pride in being an anti-hobgoblin. And there certainly was no convenience. Instead of the end of the roll always being right there like a trusty dog, I had to search for it, reaching up and behind the fat roll like a clumsy pickpocket. I admit there was a bit of flourish to ripping the paper off FTB, one absent in TD, but for some reason, I kept dropping the paper. Any kind of swashbuckling exuberance is lost when you have to pick up TP from the floor, believe me. End of experiment.

Toilet paper was made to unspool from the top down. It's that simple. And now that I have solved that mystery, I am tackling more complicated matters, such as which end of the Q-Tip to use first. There is a difference, you know.

The Yardbirds-Over Under Sideways Down