It was the approaching the mid 1960s and I was nearing third grade in elementary school. Rumors began circulating around town that the school would be moving to “New Math.” We who would be the beneficiaries of such a momentous shift saw it as a bright star in the heavens of learning. Particularly those of us with older siblings who would gleefully taunt us with “wait till you have to learn long division!” Ha! We showed them. Arithmetic is dead. Long live new math!

Yeah, well, that’s why I spent 25 minutes in the toilet paper aisle Sunday afternoon trying to decipher Ultra Strong Mega Rolls and come up with the best buy for my cash challenged paper products budget. I might have once aced the exam on the difference between a number and a numeral but that didn’t help while I was trying to mentally multiply 348 sheets times 9 rolls divided by $9.45 all the while having visions of bears singing about how wonderfully clean their charming toilet tissue makes them feel.

It doesn’t help that there are no federal guidelines for bathroom tissue roll sizes. Double, triple, giant, mega, mega plus, and super were the adjectives in use in that aisle but even when used by the same brands, the same moniker did not represent the same number (numeral?) of sheets per roll. One package of Mega Rolls boasted 308 sheets per roll while another claimed 348 sheets per roll. Double Rolls had either 148 sheets or 167 sheets. None of that made it easier to figure out if 9 rolls for $9.45 was a better value than 12 rolls for $11.45. New math said “x is greater than y when the intersecting sets represent the lesser value of the total compared to the greater value of the sum of the variable(s) represented by the equation,” but old arithmetic said “Hold on there, Baby Bear. That’s not just right.” (If you are trying to follow along without a program, although everybody used it as a basis for comparison, I never found a roll claiming to be “Regular.” Not a good thing not to be amidst all that toilet paper.)

By the time my daughter entered third grade I was happy to see basic arithmetic had returned to the school curriculum and I could look forward to having help balancing my checkbook. Unfortunately even old math was not her passion and anything other than straight addition, subtraction, or division by ten was, though not a challenge, not actively pursued as a Sunday afternoon diversion. And so, now these many years later, I was left standing in the toilet paper aisle pondering if I would rather have “ultra soft” or “ultra strong,” whether the shape of the package would fit in my closet, and finally just going for the greatest number of sheets per roll figuring that equals the fewest number of times I’ll have to change the roll on the holder.

Satisfied I made the most logical if not the most economical choice, I checked my shopping list for the next item up. Hmm. Paper towels. I have to start shopping with a calculator.

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Memo to self: Rerun this if stuck for a post on August 26, National Toilet Paper Day. Really, August 26, not the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November. Who knew?