Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Missing Toilet Paper

Today is August 17. I wasn’t going to bother writing about this trivial event but one of my friends who is two courses away from getting his MBA at a different east coast school told me that this was a “bloggable offense” so why not. He also wants credit for "bloggable offense" if that ever becomes a household phrase.

I moved some of my stuff out of storage yesterday back to my apartment. Before we left, my roommates and I were told that we could leave stuff in “at our own risk.” Obviously to an aspiring lawyer, I took those words literally and we opted to move most of our stuff into storage. After hours of packing everything up, however, certain things, such as dishes and pots and pans were moved from their shelves to lower shelves in the hopes that they would simply be left alone. And when we returned yesterday, that was certainly the case.

Except for one set of things, everything we left behind was exactly where we left it. It is the missing stuff that is temporarily driving me crazy and since I have now returned from the store with replacement items, I feel compelled to write about it. For those of you who live in an apartment, or who lived in dorms, you can appreciate the pains of having to move in and move out on a regular basis at the whim of campus housing. The apartment complex we live in isn’t really campus housing, but in all intent and effect acts as such, so there are many parallels. Because they were bringing our apartment complex into line with the 1980s fire code, we were required to temporarily (that is, for the summer), move our stuff out into storage, with the condition that anything we left behind was left “at our own risk.” Thank goodness this problem will not exist next summer when the bar prep courses start. Hopefully.

Anyway, everything was left right were we left it except for our cleaning supplies. A brief laundry list of items so you get the point: 10 or 15 rolls of toilet paper, soap, a shower scrub brush and replacement sponge, trashbags, kitchen sponges, wet naps, dishwashing detergent, dishwasher detergent, maybe some hand and dish towels, and miscellaneous other cleaning supplies. Our bathroom trashcan was also missing, but this is unconfirmed as I am away from my apartment until tomorrow and it may be sitting in one of the dozens of boxes and trashbags adorning our living room. Anyway, who leaves dishes and pots and pans but not cleaning supplies. I expected “leave at your own risk” to cover playstations, plasma televisions, jewelry, and the like, not toilet paper. Is our university so desperate for brand name cleaning supplies that they have resorted to borrowing those of students who left them behind at their own risk? In the end, I can’t really complain because we were warned that everything could have been thrown away, so on the bright side, our dishes and pots and pans didn’t have to be replaced. Honestly though, why would someone want to take my bathroom scrub brush. That’s what really irks me. A scrub brush. Give me a break. That’s almost as bad as having to run to the library to use the bathroom since our toilet paper was missing.

On a side note, the stock of the company I bought all of my cleaning supplies from today (as of now) is up 1.04%, which I obviously directly relate to the purchase of my replacement supplies. I would state what company this is, but they get enough advertising as it is and they can certainly afford to pay me to advertise. Let’s just say this company tried to trademark THE smiley face. (Or a happy face, I can never remember).