Toilet Roll Game · 28 July 2003
The game is best played after a trip to the store.
Three things to remember when purchasing toilet paper. One, it must not be scented, because no one has ever made a successful go at that. Two, it must be white, or with a subtle pattern on white if plain is unavailable: along with other opinions of the French, Herself is quite vocal in her contempt of their thing for pink asswipe. Mint green is out of the question. Three, ‘no such thing as one ply too many’.
(A fine time can be had when queueing at the grocery checkout by holding the package of toilet rolls in front of you – as though, say, presenting it as a gift – and, with an absolute minimum of arm movement, seeing how close to the ceiling you can get it; ceilings in modern grocery stores are uniformly high, and for that there is a reason. Remember that objects return to the ground with the same momentum with which they went up.)
Once home, the game can be played after all the other groceries are put away, or before: that has no bearing.
At our house the toilet rolls are kept next to the toilet, in a basket, right close at hand, available when one runs out and another is required. Some keep theirs in a cupboard with the towels, under the sink with the cleaning products, or even in a closet down the hall. We prefer the convenience of a basket. For this game, you need to prefer this convenience as well.
To play, situate yourself with a clear line of sight approximately as far away from your toilet as you can comfortably lob an object the size and heft of a toilet roll. If in doing so you find yourself in the hall or another room, that’s fine. Open the package of toilet rolls (it should be at least a twelve-pack).
Take the first toilet roll and put it on the ground, for later.
Wearing rubber gloves, dip the second into can of flammable gel, squeeze the excess, and place it strategically in the drapes of a Polynesian-themed restaurant like in Goodfellas.
Unravel and bunch up part of the third and stick some up each nostril, with quite a bit hanging out, so you can enjoy a bowl of hash like the bridesmaid in Go.
Write notes on the fourth in a caffeinated, nervous hand, like Dustin Hoffman in All the President’s Men. Call out that you’ll be just a minute.
The fifth will carry a message: a bomb will go off when you get up from the toilet, like the one seen by Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon. Good thing you’re not actually on the toilet then, isn’t it.
With the sixth, sew a breast pocket for a lumberjack’s plaid flannel shirt.
Stuff most of the seventh up your sleeve. Daub a bit of saliva, and wipe dirty faces.
While a divorcing couple is in talking to their lawyer, wrap their car in the eighth.
Send the ninth to Conrad Black, along with a note: ‘Thinking of you’.
Carry the tenth at dawn across a frosty field behind a country house, in a robe, barefoot.
Redo Peter Sellers’ bathroom scene in The Party with the elevent, but use a vacuum cleaner.
Lob the twelfth, watch it bounce out of the basket right into the bowl.
When the toilet paper is gone, ask Tallulah Bankhead if she can spare some. If not, ask if she has two fives for a ten.
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