I told you not to throw all that stuff away...

Every year there has to be some kind of issue. Something that keeps us occupied during our free time. Our oh-so-copious free time. In previous years it's been locks on the bathroom doors, bad copiers, terrible PSATs (and not scores, mind you, but the actual experience of giving the PSATs).

This year's fun has been toilet paper.

Yes, this is what occupies the minds of teachers and administrators when they aren't concerned about student achievement, content, grading, planning and any number of other items that a teacher must think about on a daily basis.

Apparently the guy who is in charge of purchasing toilet paper for the entire county messed up the order (there's one guy, that's his job. Who knew? I wonder what the qualifications are?). Instead of ordering by roll, he ordered by sheet.

I kid you not.

By sheet.

Needless to say, in a district of hundreds of thousands of people, employees, faculty, students, the whole kit and kaboodle, there was not enough toilet paper for all. How did this manifest, you may ask? Well, I am about to tell you. Every day instead of 5 or 6 rolls of toilet paper in the ladies' faculty restroom (and I can only speak to that restroom, since I don't loiter in the student bathrooms (with good reason) or the mens' room), we would have 2, maybe three per day. I at first thought this was a result of something the custodians were doing. It's happened before - they take too long to refill the soap dispenser, or there's not enough paper towels. So this was not out of the ordinary. But then came the days when there was only one roll of toilet paper in there (for two stalls, and at least 40 women). And then there was the day when there was no toilet paper at all. That morning I entered the Social Studies workroom, and found the department chair of the English department visiting us, and I said something about the fact that there was no toilet paper in the women's room. At 7:05 in the morning.

Her response was to remove her cell phone from her bra (yes, you read that correctly, that's how she carries her cell phone around school. She has been known to pull it out of her bra in the middle of the hallway to answer the phone), dials the phone and proceeds to complain VERY loudly to whomever was on the other end of the line about the lack of toilet paper. It was at this point that the news broke that the toilet paper shortage was a district-wide event. We were on toilet paper rations. It was England, 1942 all over again. Next it would be sugar and butter products. Women would be penciling nylon "lines" on the back of their legs, and we'd be swing dancing in the dark during an air raid drill. Or, we'd just buy our own damn toilet paper and bring it with us whenever we went to the bathroom. Which is pretty much what we did.

It's better now, by the way.

There was a teacher who'd had his house tp'd earlier in the fall. He should have saved the stuff and brought it in.