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i guess i have to assume that the quebe knew i’d explain packing a wedge in my usual round about manner, but you can’t have a story with out some context setting.

right–so my freshman year of college my roommate was a lacrosse player from the boston area–which was particularly ironic, b/c i had said, aloud,-several times– before getting my roommate assignment, that if i could just avoid a lacrosse player (they were the ones that tormented me and beat me up in high school) and for the love of god, avoid someone with a boston accent, i’d make the best of it. naturally there was no way that i’d get anyone except a jock from boston. Later i found out that i freaked him out as much as he did me, which my long hair and leather jacket and guitar and shit. In the end mike and i got along pretty well i think.

i dunno how it is nowadays, but way back in our college days, it was customary for the roommates to speak and sort of divvy up the major appliance of the door room. in this case mike supplied the mini fridge and the microwave, i brought the TV and stereo. i imagine that all kids have their own washer and dryers and shit nowadays, but we lived a simple existence back in 1991. as it turned out, we had one of the only tv’s on the floor.

now being on the lacrosse team, mike instantly made friends with other team members, and for the most part, they were of like minds and like personalities. they liked monday night football. so instantly, monday nites became quite an event in our room. for the most part it was ok, b/c i pretty much could always get beer out of letting 10 dood sit in our room until 11 pm.

now, with power of google and everything i’m timid about putting up too much information about any one person–who knows they might work for homeland security and come bust me for something or something. so i’ll paint in broad, memoir style strokes.

Directly across the hall lived 2 guys–one of which actually lived in mike’s home town and when to the same catholic high school, he was also on the lacrosse team. he was sort of kicked around by the other guys b/c he had this “i used to play d&d” air about him–for the life of me i can’t remember his name. he was a nice guy though. his roommate, was Dan, or Danny D as he was usually called. he was from scarsdale ny, and seemed to come from a little money. he too was on the lacrosse team, and was something of a ring leader for the whole gang. Dan wasn’t too sharp in classes but had a quick wit and often tooled on people in some clever ways. over the first month or so, dan started spending more and more time in mike and my’s room watching TV. it was not unusual for dan and i to meet up to watch soap operas all afternoon. i know, weird. (we were abc watchers for the record, mostly loving and all my children).

so i ended up spending a fair amount of time with dan. so one day in the late fall, we were watching something, i don’t’ remember what–it was a hot day outside, by vermont standards, something of an indian summer or whatever. of course the dorms didn’t have AC or anything. i remember vividly, dan standing up and announcing to mike and i

“Jeeeeesaus! christ it’s hot–i gotta go pack a wedge.
be back in a minute”

mike and i looked at each other confusedly –mike finally asked up “what’s ‘packing a wedge?’” I thought it was gonna shotgun a beer or something.

“you guys never pack a wedge?
christ–where are you from again?”

dan then went on to describe a mythical art, passed on from man to man since the dawn of toilet paper. you see, fair reader, packing a wedge is the act of making a little bunch of toilet paper, and then inserting it between one’s butt cheeks, and then putting one’s underwear/pants back up and going about one’s life.

why would one do such a thing?

absorbency, comfort–it’s an anti swamp-ass device. don’t make me explain that to you–you should know what that is already.

apparently in dan’s high school packing wedges was a regular and normal thing. there are a couple situation where one might pack a wedge, a hot day for example–or perhaps a case of ‘red eye’ (again don’t make me explain) from a previous night of boozing or spicy food.

Now of course you can’t pack a wedge all the time, and certainly not if you have to be active in anyway. but if you’re just sitting at a desk or watching tv or whatever–they’re very effective.

oh yes–i’ve done it. prolly only 2-3 times in my life. but it works. the retrieval and disposal of the wedge is not very pleasant, but overall it’s a great thing.

dan had several pointers on how to make a good wedge, one doesn’t want to use too much TP or people will be able to tell, at the same time one doesn’t want to use too little, so that it becomes–errr saturated. The perhaps paramount is the amount of compaction that one puts on the wedge. too much and it not be absorbent, and hard/uncomfortable. too little and it’s just a fluff of TP that will fall out.

Finally the actually packing of the wedge seemed to be something of a zen art. i wont’ go it to it, but there are complexities there.

so there you have it.

I don’t remember exactly how this came up, and how i passed this knowledge on to richard. further, it’s interesting that i completely forgot about it until he mentioned, like some sort of hypnosis trick that makes a person bark like a dog when they hear the word “SHERMAN” or something.

this is my gift unto you.