Rick puts toilet paper on the roll so that the end of the roll hangs down the back. I put toilet paper on the roll in the correct way, so that the end hangs down the front and is easy to access. When we’re at his house, I play by his rules and don’t say anything about the bass-ackwards way the toilet paper hangs, and at my house, he should respect my superior toilet paper replacement skills and leave well enough alone.

I came home the other night to find a new toilet paper roll had been placed on the holder, and after I was done with my business and replaced the damn thing correctly, I confronted the boy.

“Okay, one, who the hell taught you to replace toilet paper?” I asked, because subtlety has never been my strong suit, and maybe he didn’t know how much it irritated me before that. “The flap goes in the front. And two, did you not see that I stuck a four pack of toilet paper under the sink for you to use?” (This much was clear, he hadn’t. The stuff under the sink is our first foray into recycled toilet paper, and the stuff hanging on the roll was still Quilted Northern, obviously gotten from the hall closet.)

Rick gave me a “What are you talking about?” look and went back to fixing his tea. No more was said about it, and the next morning after he’d gone off to play golf, I find out the bastard has flipped the toilet paper again just to be contrary. I flipped it back, not to be contrary, but because it’s my house and I am right. And even if I weren’t right? It’s still my house. War is on, people, even if we laughed about it on the phone later.

And seriously, how do two people go through toilet paper so much faster than one person? Is there some obscure law of physics that covers this? What the hell?

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