Stephen Lewis: Whatever happened to colored toilet paper? on The Murfreesboro Post

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Stephen Lewis: Whatever happened to colored toilet paper?

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By: STEPHEN LEWIS, Post Columnist

Posted: Sunday, October 4, 2009 7:06 am

With all the great inventions that have come along over the last 20 years you know what I really miss?

If you said the Atari 2600 with fabulous games like "Combat" and "Space Invaders" and the superb graphics that only the 1980s could bring you'd be wrong.

If you said the Flobee, which promised to save me thousands in haircut payments, but actually only saved me the cost of one haircut and left me looking like my hair had been cut by a left-handed, blind chimp, you would be wrong again.

What I really miss, more than anything else that has come and gone during my lifetime, is...

Before I tell you, I think it's important that you know something about me. I know you think that someone who writes with such sophistication and aplomb must be a very complicated individual. But actually I'm a very simple person.

I grew up on tomato soup and cottage cheese and I still enjoy both today. I prefer Pepsi in glass bottles like it used to be even though it's dang near impossible to find nowadays.

I tell you all this so you won't be surprised when I tell you that what I truly miss more than anything, what I really want to see again, is the simple pleasure...of colored toilet paper.

That's right ... colored toilet paper. Heck, I didn't even know they didn't make it anymore till I asked my wife why she always picked white.

"How about picking up a package of blue or yellow every once in a while? Shoot, I'll even take some pink. Just something to change it up a bit."

That's when she told me they don't even make colored toilet paper anymore. So I decided to do a little investigation of my own to find out why toilet paper makers are keeping us from buying colored TP.

First, I made a trip to the store. I never dreamed we had so many choices of TP. There is ultra soft, ultra strong, ultra plush (obviously the TP industry has a love affair with the word ultra).

Single ply, double ply, and triple ply (must be some really aggressive wipers out there)

Regular roll, double roll, mega roll, and super mega roll.

You can get TP that's scented, unscented, with aloe, with lotion, and even one brand that claims to have little pillows of softness built right in.

Now as someone who grew up in Tennessee and has been camping a few times, I'll admit that I've used some non-conventional items when pressed. Paper towels, napkins, McDonald's bags, a strip of cardboard, tulip poplar leaves, the label off a can of baked beans, and even an article on the new fall season from a TV Guide magazine.

So I realize it seems unlikely that I would complain about something as trivial as colored TP. But I actually see this as the continual erosion of our freedoms as Americans.

If it were up to me I would re-write the Declaration of Independence to say "life, liberty, and the pursuit of multi-colored toilet papers."

Through my investigation I found that colored toilet paper was outlawed some time ago due to the dyes used in the production process. Apparently the dyes can't be filtered out before the water is returned to us in the form of drinking water from the sewage plant.

Personally, if they can't remove the dye from the water I shutter to think of what else can't be removed.

Wasn't there an issue with the city of La Vergne's drinking water being pink a few years ago? Maybe someone had hoarded up a stash of pink toilet paper and just started using it again.

Believe me, if I had known it was going to be outlawed I would have bought a truckload and made a killing on e-Bay. Cabbage Patch dolls, Tickle Me Elmos and blue toilet paper. I'd be retired by now.

I understand that there's a lot going on in most people's world right now. The debate over health care, the war in Afghanistan, joblessness, homelessness, and, of course, finding out the truth in Michael Jackson's death.

But if you're like me, you don't want to live in a country that allows us to have eight different colors of M&M's but only one color of toilet paper.

So I encourage you to write or call your representatives immediately and tell them you want – no, make that – you demand that they put together legislation that brings color back into our bathrooms.

And when it is done we'll all sing "Kumbaya" standing around a statue of a giant "Toilet of Liberty.” And instead of an inscription that says "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses..." it will say "Give me your cramping, your constipated, your...Hmmm ... now what can I use that fits with toilet and rhymes with masses? I'll have to think about that one for a while.

Tagged under Love of Toilet Paper, Stephen Lewis, There ought to be a Law, Voices

Member Opinions:

By: lily127 on 12/2/10
Wow, I was just reading an old 1937 Family Circle issue and there was an ad for Zee's Toilet Tisse in White Orchid or Green and I sat here frozen for a minute wondering what the heck happened to colored toilet paper and how I never realized it went away but suddenly missing it. I remember Scott having Pink, Blue, Yellow, Mint Green and I think a Lavendar color. Now they won't even give you a standard sized roll because they say it's stronger now so it's ok that it's the size of a postage stamp! Sad how things change! Colored TP would be a big seller these days after years of only white!