Friday, January 21, 2011

Strange Habits

I was watching Rachael Ray this morning. Okay, let me rephrase. I was...doing something else, and Rachael Ray's show was on, and I overheard...okay, I was watching Rachael Ray, and I saw something quite peculiar. A woman was talking about her addiction to eating toilet paper. There was plenty of video of her consuming bathroom tissue in significant quantities. She keeps a roll in her glove compartment, for a snack on the road. She keeps some in a bag in her purse. She has eaten over one thousand pounds of toilet paper over twenty-three years.
Questions. Well, there's the obvious one: What the hell is it about toilet paper that this woman craves? She says she loves the way it melts in her mouth. She likes the feel of it against her tongue.
Next: How did she find out that she liked eating toilet paper? I'm not sure if this was answered in the segment, but I would sure like to know. It seems to me there is only one way to find out: Try eating some. But why? What would possess a person to even try eating toilet paper? You're sitting there, on the toilet, getting ready to wrap up your business, and you think, "Hmmm, I wonder what it would be like to eat this stuff..." Wow. Why doesn't she just eat cotton candy if she likes the feel of something with that kind of texture melting in her mouth?
She says, and I paraphrase, "I want people to know that I'm a regular person, like them. I just like eating toilet paper." Sure. I mean, other than that, we probably have a lot in common.
Somewhere out there, a man was watching that segment and smiling, tears shimmering in his eyes as he gently folded sheets of toilet paper onto his tongue and said, "I've found the one."

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