There are many red-letter dates in the history of toilet paper. - 1391 - Emperor of China reportedly uses toilet paper
- 1857 - Joseph C. Gayetty produces America's first packaged toilet paper
- 1890 - Scott introduces toilet paper on a roll
- 1942 - All hail two-ply!
- 1955 - First TP TV ad
- 1973 - Johnny Carson joke about toilet paper shortage prompts hoarding
But alas, we couldn't find any allusion to an incident that prompted some teenage genius to reflect, "Hey, what if I hung toilet paper all around my gym teacher's house?" The closest we came was this Usenet post, in which another truth-seeker ponders the same question but also craps out: Only hit was ...'festoon the trees and shrubbery of a residential yard with toilet paper...[U.S. slang, mid 1900s-pres.]' Even Wikipedia's toilet papering entry doesn't flush out the origin of this traditional prank. One
thing's for sure: Many teenagers consider TP'ing -- especially on Halloween eve, when toilet paper strewn all over suburban yards reaches epidemic proportions -- as their birthright. In one newspaper article headlined "Toilet-papering teen sues high school officials," the TP'ing teen's lawyer cites the practice's "long history in our community" as evidence that a two-day suspension was cruel and unusual punishment. And one more thing about TP'ing: Practitioners in some parts of the country call it "rolling," as this Harvard dialect study shows. That's about all the poop on TP'ing we could find. We're wiped, so till next time...
|
