Our family tradition
August 9, 2014
Every family has a different rite of passage to celebrate the shift from babyhood to childhood.
Some families throw a party when a child gets potty trained.
Others go out to eat at a grown up restaurant to celebrate the child’s newfound ability to sit still.
Our family builds toilet paper towers.
That’s right – toilet paper towers.
I have photos in the album of my older son standing proudly next to his towers, and others where he’s been wrapped up like a mummy in toilet paper.
He is beaming in all of them, excited by the unconventional use of something so conventional, and pleased that he feels slightly rebellious.
He’d been told since he first began crawling not to touch the toilet paper.
As of this week, I have similar photos of our second son standing stoically before a wall of stacked toilet tissue.
He was confused at first when I started unpacking the bulk package in the living room.
Like his older brother before him, he’s had it drilled into his head that toilet paper is off-limits.
He was hesitant at first. He stared like I was insane while I built a tall tower.
Then a slow smile spread across his face. In a flash he karate chopped it in half, and squealed with glee as it tumbled to the ground.
It is interesting how differently my two boys handled their toilet paper experience.
My older son, ever the engineer, built forts for his action figures. He installed a roll each on the feet of the footstool in the kitchen. I guess he thought it made it more stable.
He wanted his creations preserved for all posterity. It was a tearful day when our bathroom needs required that we begin dismantling the walls of his buildings.
Alas, toilet paper has a primary function that must be made a priority.
His brother had no such sentimental attachment to my hastily built towers. I could barely keep ahead of him before he bulldozed through the stack of rolls.
I consider it a miracle that I was able to document him standing impatiently before a giant wall before I cut him loose to annihilate it.
I then photographed him lying on his back amidst the rolls scattered on the floor, a look of ecstasy on his face.
I’m not sure what he found so enticing about the experience, but he seemed to find the mess heavenly.
Perhaps it was just that he was being allowed to play with something that was usually forbidden.
Finally, I photographed him using a roll as a pillow, snuggled up with his special blankie. He whispered, “night, night,” and closed his eyes in mock sleep, a satisfied smile on his face.
Leave it to our baby boy to fall in love with toilet paper rolls. Never in my life have I known a child who so freely gives affection.
He loves everything else. Why not toilet paper?
Some may think our toilet paper tradition is strange, but we think it’s just plain fun.
This article first appeared in the Lewistown News-Argus and the Sidney (Mont.) Herald on August 9, 2014.