The spare roll of toilet paper

Two hundred and twelve sheets, on average, sit in reserve on top of the tank, behind the tank, balanced on the windowsill, or, in the more organized households, inside a dedicated basket that exists for no other purpose. It is rarely touched. Its entire function is to be present and unopened, judged successful precisely to the degree that it is never called upon. It belongs to a recognizable type, the type catalogued by anyone who has spent time in rooms built around the management of low-grade anxiety: the fire extinguisher, the spare key taped under the mailbox, the emergency contact nobody has phoned. Its entire value is contingent on a crisis that, most days, does not arrive. When the crisis does arrive, the household's regard for the spare roll rises sharply and briefly, gratitude expressed at two in the morning to a roll of paper that cannot register it. By breakfast the gratitude has already faded, and the roll, now promoted to active duty, is treated with the same offhandedness its predecessor was, right up until it, too, runs low and its replacement is fetched from the basket. No household thanks the spare roll in advance. It is not that kind of relationship. It is trusted completely and considered constantly, and it is loved, if that is the word, only in retrospect, once it has already been used up.

Beatrice Womack