my dad told me once that he knew i was growing up when i stopped asking for strawberry shortcake for my birthday cake; for me, the realization came a little later — when i started loading the toilet paper with the ribbon going up.

i remember as kid learning that there was such a thing as a great toilet paper debate. apparently adults liked to bicker about which way to load toilet paper — with the ribbon going down over the front of the roll, or with the ribbon coming up from the bottom of the front of the roll.

adults did a lot of mystifying things — there was no question about that — but this seemed particularly foolish, even for them. it was clear to me why a person would hang their toilet paper with the ribbon heading down; it’s so much neater, prettier, and you can fold the edge over like they do in hotels. what’s not to love? when you hang it the other way, with the ribbon going up, it’s chaotic; you create a loose end that can’t quite be reconciled. it didn’t seem like much of a contest to me.

and, yes, for years i was bothered by the fact that so many people insisted on hanging their toilet paper with the ribbon heading up and i could not figure out why that was.

then one day it hit me — a bag of bricks and bright light at the same time. perhaps it was a freight train. high speed and bullet. i believe i was in college at the time, and though i can’t remember who enlightened me, they made their point crystal clear: if you hang the toilet paper ribbon-up, you get an easier tear, some leverage against the rest of the roll, a protection against the ever-present threat of unraveling.

i was floored. amazed. in awe. so there was method to this madness. my pseudo-often-misguided scientific instinct kicked in, and i rehung my toilet paper to see if there was any merit in this new idea. i tried it for a whole roll, and, lo, and behold, the trick seemed to work. i felt bad for denying respect to half of the adult population all these years. oh, the new hanging wasn’t as pretty, but it actually did facilitate tearing sheets off. amazed, i converted.

and that’s when it hit me that i must be getting old — if i needed a way to make tearing toilet paper easier.

i rehung it, out of sheer principle — just like i went back to requesting strawberry shortcake for my birthday.