Aselin

We have three teenagers living under our roof right now. Four, if you are not calculating by actual age, but three who by standard definitions are classified as teenagers. If the messy rooms, sleeping during the day and giant consumption of pudding didn't clue you in to that fact, the target on the front of our house would soon tip our hand: we were recently toilet papered.

Kudos to the attackers, this was not a meager job. Someone's parents shop at Costco. Early Saturday morning when I beheld the handiwork I actually gaped, yes gaped at the volume of triple ply that decorated our yard.

Now I am not against toilet papering per se, I understand it's a rite of passage to both perpetrate and be victimized by the practice but I do have an opinion that I do think the general population should share. (I know you know I think ALL of my opinions should be shared by the general population, but this one is really good and surprisingly sane.)

Toilet paper should only be administered as high as the perpetrator can reach. NO throwing the roll up over a homeowner's 95 foot high trees despite how strong your throwing arm is.

Our front yard is full of extra large citrus trees. Citrus that used to be a commercial grove so they are really big. And this particular morning they were covered stem to stern with toilet paper.

Lucky for me I have kids.

Stop laughing.

Again, lucky for me I have kids - so I rouse the little beauties from their teenage slumber-comas and send them to the yard to collect. My kids are fairly good workers, BUT this was embarrassing, front yard work. People would SEE them. Their friends would SEE them. How humiliating it would be for their friends to see them with armfuls of toilet paper. We collected over three large trash bags of toilet paper.

I regret I didn't take photos.

Here's the net of why you should be glad you don't live by us:

A) Unnamed child #1 remarked multiple times to me and the other kids that they were impressed with the quality of toilet paper used in the attack. Not the volume, mind you, but the actual quality, even rubbing some against their cheek at one point.


B) We couldn't (read: didn't) clean it all up. Some of it was WAY too high and would have required a commercial ladder to pick it down. So of course, we left it.

It wasn't much, but against the citrusy green, the strips of white did stand out. For a couple of weeks.

Some neighbors already dislike us because we were the first ones to not seed for a winter lawn a few years ago. Now, only one guy on our street still does it. We are like a cancer of sub-standard landscaping spreading throughout the land. Liberating, but not pretty. Now those same neighbors plus more dislike us for further adding to the blight and leaving copious amounts of toilet paper waving in the Arizona wind.

Of course, I think no one sees it, or like the dust in my living room, I think no one notices. But everyone does.

Everyone.

How everyone? Well, yesterday hubby tells me that one of our friends, mother of young children who drives by often, was lamenting that their house was out of toilet paper when her toddler says, "Mommy, we can go get it from that house that grows it on their trees."