The Great Toilet Paper Roll Mystery

Ever since the girls were little, we’ve tried to teach them good hygiene and impeccable manners. “Always say please and thank you,” we coached. “Wash your hands before dinner,” we asked. An occasional doozy was thrown in, such as “Can you please pick up your shoes from the middle of the living room floor?” or “Did you feed your goldfish? He’s swimming a little sideways…”

But the one that gets me every time? “Please replace the toilet paper roll on the dispenser when you have used the last bit”.

I think I have spoken those exact words about 400 times. Why, might you ask? BECAUSE THEY REFUSE TO REMEMBER. Worse yet, they blame each other: the famous and overused It-Wasn’t-Me-It-Was-Her routine.

One particular day, this conversation repeated itself once again, and I was feeling a little snarky. When both girls denied that it was she who had used the last of the toilet paper and not replaced the roll, I lost my shit. As I questioned them over and over about who was responsible, the discussion took on a more creative direction. Well if it wasn’t either of them, then who could it have been, I asked. Was it the housekeeper who used all the butt wipe? Was it the gardener, in a state of emergency? Perhaps it was a stranger, who broke into our house for the sole purpose of using our bathroom, depleting us of TP, and then running away?

Finally, the girls offered that our housekeeper’s friend Lourdes had visited earlier that day.

“Oh!” said I. “Lourdes came over, wiped up all our toilet paper, leaving a new roll sitting on top of the dispenser partly used?” They looked at me with those guilty little kid eyes, and nodded yes. They flat out threw poor Lourdes under the bus –  over a roll of TP.

Well, Lourdes became very popular in our house. According to the girls, she came over to our house all the time when no one was around, leaving small messes uncleared, dirty dishes in the sink, half-eaten PB&Js sitting right on the footstool, and more. She even left a poopie in the toilet, a mystery surrounded by only water and no toilet paper at all. Twice!

Yes that Lourdes seems to be a messy, messy girl.

And she gets around too. While we were in Palm Springs last weekend, staying at the beautiful home of some close friends, Lourdes must have snuck along inside our luggage because she struck again. As we packed up the car and prepared to leave, I did a last sweep through the house to pick up any forgotten items.

And there, waiting for me like a goddamn mousetrap, was a gift from Lourdes. The Mystery of the Toilet Paper Roll: The Saga Continues.