DannyBoyinExile

Like the kicker on a football team, toilet paper is something that not very many people think about. But it IS important, and its value increases along with its scarcity.
By policy, each inmate in TDCJ is given a roll of toilet paper once a week – and one of the first lessons an inmate learns is how to be conservative with it. People in the free world may not use it very often (and only for its intended purpose), but when you find yourself locked in a cell for long periods of time, you’ll discover far more uses for it. Not only do you pee – and wipe the seat – at least ten times a day, you also use it to wipe your bowl and spoon after eating, blow your nose, clean up minor spills, etc. It doesn’t take very many instances of running out, and having to ask someone else for some of the toilet paper that THEY were smart enough to conserve, before you learn to ration how much and what you use it for. Some people even have self-imposed rules of exactly how many squares of it they use to wipe the toilet seat with!
For most of my prison career, we were issued single-ply tissue, that probably wasn’t much different than what John Wayne used – and probably wasn’t much softer than the wood it was made from! Then one day we were issued our weekly roll, and almost immediately guys were at their doors, exclaiming about how soft it was! It seems that TDCJ had some sympathy on us, and switched to double-ply tissue.
I found it hilarious when, a few days later, the same guys were complaining about already running out of their weekly supply! They didn’t realize that it was only twice as soft because they were using twice as much of it. I learned long ago to keep an extra roll for emergencies (they sell it on commissary, after all), but that’s a lesson that some people STILL haven’t learned.
These days, everyone in TDCJ gets their roll of toilet paper each week, and don’t even realize that it was ever any different. Some of these guys weren’t even BORN back when we got the other kind! Now I feel like one of the old guys, telling war stories about how things were “back in the day”, but it happens to be true. (The story, I mean, not me being old!) So says DannyBoy.