TP

In all these years of writing blog postings I've seldom written about members of my family, particularly my wife. She fully acknowledges she doesn't read anything I write, but I'm used to being ignored by people, even by my closest family member. Other people do read what I read, albeit, in tiny quantities.

I can't really explain her talent for reconstructing whole dialogues from years, perhaps even decades ago. My daughter Susan remarks how Mom can come up with the most trivial of remembrances years and years later, like where they ate after the older daughter Nancy's wedding shower 16 years ago.

It is remarkable considering my wife fails to remember the names of people she just heard about on television when trying to tell me what they said. "Oh, I forget. You know who." No I don't.

It's as if she could be a court reporter or stenographer and function without a pad or the machine. All husbands deny what they've said, but when my wife tells me that I once said I didn't "like Charmin toilet paper "I will believe her I must have said it, but do wonder in what context the utterance came up. 

I attribute her talent for remembered dialogue to years and years of watching soap operas, when there was a wide variety to choose from. Anyone who can follow those plot lines that take years to unravel has to have a good memory.

Her favorites were Guiding Light and Days of Our Lives. I mean you have to be able to remember things watching those shows because there is no action, only people floating around dressed to the nines wearing beautiful dresses and earrings at 2:00 in the afternoon, pouring a drink and moaning about their life.

And it's hardly only women who watch these shows. One of my male friends when he was over would go over the latest episodes of one of the shows with my wife to the point that when I overheard them talk, I thought they had just gotten back from a family reunion. "Who are you talking about?"

Now that my daughter Susan has joined a good part of the rest of world and bought a house with her husband, she finds herself at Home Depot as much as at the supermarket. And the other day I joined her. She needed things. I needed things, and for one of the very few times, I was there without my wife.

We have a side shed and store extra bales of toilet paper an paper towels there. The shed doesn't leak, and the goods don't spoil. My wife's not a hoarder per se, she just like to take advantage of a good price when it rolls around and "stock up."

I report on the inventory and lately told her we were down to two bales each of paper towels and toilet paper. Hardly an emergency, but I figured a reorder point. She told me I probably wouldn't find the paper towels at Home Depot. They'd be sold out. And they were.

The fact that you can but paper goods like that at a home improvement store shows you how great this country is. We genuinely live in the land of plenty.

But Home Depot did have one bale of Charmin toilet paper left, and I bought it along with the other few items on my list. I got home about 9:30 that evening and left the unloaded goods in the vestibule. The next morning the dialogue started:

Did you save your Home Depot receipts?
Sure, why do you ask?
We don't use Charmin toilet paper. We always use Scott's. I can take it back.
What? It's toilet paper. Who cares who makes it? Charmin is all they had.
You said years ago you don't like Charmin. It's too soft.
I said there's a toilet paper I don't like? I don't remember ever stating a preference. How could I tell you I don't like Charmin if you've always been bringing Scott's into the house? What, I went over to a neighbor's in time of need and came home and said I don't like their Charmin?
You did. You said you don't like Charmin.
I went over a neighbor's? There's people out there who might not be able to get toilet paper still. And here we've got a bale of Charmin and you're going to take it back? I'm not taking it back.
We'll see. Maybe I'll take it back Saturday.
Well, suit yourself. When you need toilet paper at that critical time it's always good to realize you have toilet paper, not who made it.

The fate of this bale of Charmin is still undecided. I have a feeling it's going to get to stay. Then someday when the time comes, I'll try and remember what I thought of using it. We'll then see if Charmin ever makes it back into the house.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com