MARK MY WORD: UNROLLING TOILET PAPER IS CHILD'S PLAY

When it comes to fun, Bailey is on a roll. Too bad the toilet paper isn't.

Toilet paper is more than an indispensable commodity at our house. It's also a toy.

Fifteen-month-old daughter Bailey has discovered toilet paper.

She loves to unroll the tissue-thin paper into a pile on the floor.

If she had her way, she would cover the entire house in unrolled toilet paper.

Why doesn't someone invent a lock for toilet paper dispensers? I've had to start putting the toilet paper on the top of the toilet tank so that Bailey can't reach it.

Bailey likes to tear off a piece of toilet paper, wipe her hands on it and then throw the piece into the trash can.

That's all very good, except she wants to repeat the action a million times, tearing off ever-larger sections of toilet paper that increasingly end up scattered all over the bathroom floor.

Never mind that she has tons of toys to play with. Toilet paper is more fun. It gets underfoot like a million pieces of confetti and mom and dad tell you "no" a lot. What more do you want?

You won't find your basic roll of toilet paper in some countries, much to the dismay of children the world over.

Telephone directories, sand and stone stand in for tissue.

In Tonga, a small island in the South Pacific, people use pages from an international phone directory hung on the wall by a piece of rope.

Personally, I'm opposed to such a practice. For one thing, you never know when you might need to look up a number in the phone book.

Besides, it's not nearly as much fun for the kids. It's hard to unroll a phone book.

In the Middle East, it's common practice to use sand or a stone instead of toilet paper. It gives new meaning to leaving no stone unturned.

Kids wouldn't like it either. There's nothing to unroll. Besides, you can't wear it on top of your head or wrap yourself in it like a mummy.

Before toilet paper, people used mussel shells, corn cobs and a sponge at the end of a stick.

Miniature hockey sticks made of wood and precious metal were favorites of the ancient Romans, who presumably didn't end up in the penalty box for their trouble.

The first commercially packaged bathroom tissue was introduced by Joseph Gayetty, an American, in 1857.

Sold in stacks of 50 individual sheets, the paper was thick and splintery. Gayetty wasn't someone who was wrapped up in his work.

From a kid's perspective, no one else could get wrapped up in it either.

Fortunately, the bathroom tissue companies soon realized that children needed something to do at 15 months of age, so they invented the toilet paper roll and that wonderful roller of a dispenser.

These days, Bailey is giving the red-carpet treatment to toilet paper. She likes to roll it out like a piece of string.

Fortunately, Joni and I are comforted by the fact that kids grow up and soon find there are more interesting things to play with.

Our older daughter, 5-year-old Becca, prefers to play with those eyeball rings you can find at a certain fun-and-games restaurant.

Sometimes, it helps to have an extra pair of eyes or two.

Then again, you probably don't need to look too closely to find Bailey. Just follow the paper trail.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.