Scraping the Bottom

This morning, having accidentally turned off the mute button, I heard an ad for Quilted Northern toilet paper end with a little girl saying to an even littler girl--presumably her sister since the proud parents are seen in the background--"Your heinie will be happy." This made me want to toss my cookies, or rather the toasted English muffin I had just eaten for breakfast. Once again I am compelled to wonder why we need to talk about toilet paper, and why the word "heinie" is ever used in polite society. A slang term for buttocks, it originated during World War I as a derogatory term for German soldiers, being short for Heinrich. I say it's high time we lose that word. 

WW1 heinie.

Apparently I'm the only one who finds this subject matter offensive, certainly too personal to discuss publicly. Just yesterday I chatted with an old friend of mine, a strapping male in his mid-fifties, and he admitted to me that he likes the softest toilet paper available, going so far as to say that it was one of the very few products where he did not skimp on cost.  Our conversation plummeted further into a discussion of those blue cartoon bears who sell Charmin toilet paper on TV. Ultimately we concluded that the whole bear/toilet paper business stems from the rhetorical question, "Does a bear shit in the woods?" Apparently he does.

While I don't really care--and speaking of woods I can happily use a maple leaf--still I buy Scott's brand because of the packaging. It's classy, with each roll wrapped individually in a nice quality of tissue paper. Admittedly it's expensive, but seeing that life is short, I go for it. (It's also available in bulk--excuse the term--with up to 16 rolls in plastic packaging. It's cheaper but way less fun.)

Looking beyond toilet paper, we surely have things of greater import to discuss, like the fact that Donald Trump has somehow made millions of dollars yet is dumb enough to believe that the recent spell of frigid weather gripping much of the country is proof that global warming doesn't exist. What a dummy, or should I say dummkopf; it figures his paternal grandparents were German. (Yes, I'm still bitter about the Holocaust.)