Sure Signs I'm Getting Old:
I actually have brand loyalties.
And not just brand loyalties on the important things, like cosmetics, which I love to look at and hate to wear; I remember being thirteen and thinking Clinique makeup was just the shit (which it isn't, really, but it's nice and high-quality and comes in neat swirly-green and silver packaging, which makes it, if not the shit, the wet fart).
Or clothing brands: nothing for thirteen-year-old me but Express and the Limited, none of this Gap stuff, this was the eighties and I was a teenager and I wanted to look as hiptrash as possible right now and yes, that did include the pink headband with black polkadots and a little black bow on the side, to be worn with the matching slouchy pink t-shirt that reached to my knees.
No, now I have frumpy-housewife-in-curlers brand loyalties. I have a preference in toilet paper brands, for godsakes. I keep expecting to turn on the TV and see myself in one of those terrible cheesy seventies-style commercials, rubbing toilet paper against my cheek and squealing, "I'll never use anything else again!"
And, you know, I haven't. It's literally been years since I had any other brand of toilet paper in the house.
Now, see, that's something else that thirteen-year-old me would never have understood. Back then a dollar bill was significant money and a fiver was a windfall from heaven, to be spent however I liked with the sad knowledge that once it was gone it would not be replaced for a long time; now I am thirty and I spend my own money -- my! own! money! -- on things like toilet paper.
Boring, unfashionable, useful things. God, if being an adult means spending money on the boring stuff, count me right out and buy me a brand-new Wham! cassette.
I wasn't cool when I was thirteen, and I'm surely even less cool now. But at least now I can tell the world about my secret toilet paper shame without embarrassing myself to death, which is probably an improvement.
Replies: add your comment: currently 6 comments
Umm? Okay! But...what's wrong with toilet paper?
Posted by Nagia @ 11/10/2002 02:51 PM EST
I'm sure you ARE cooler now than when you were 13. : 3
Meh, I'm sure this is a pretty natural thing for us suburban American types. And it can be quite nice to take comfort in things we have been familiar with for years. Nothing wrong with that at all.
You should draw your ad for toilet paper that you mentally illustrated for us. LOL : 3
Posted by Wolf @ 11/10/2002 10:14 PM EST
Dude, toilet paper loyalty is important. ...when your other option is the industrial grade newspaper supplied by your dorm, you understand why you have to be picky about some things.
Posted by Whitney @ 11/11/2002 01:04 AM EST
And don't forget 200-grit sandpaper..... o_0'
Posted by Wolf @ 11/11/2002 11:07 AM EST
I could think of several things better then a Wham! cassette
Posted by Cloud12287 @ 11/11/2002 07:55 PM EST
I agree with Whitney, toilet paper is not something to be sneezed at *nodnod* Neither is tissue paper (Kleenex for me) or paper towels (go Bounty!)
And ahahahahaha!!! I love your description of your brand-name habits when you were 13 XD
Posted by Kathy @ 11/13/2002 05:07 PM EST
