Daily Gratitude: Two-ply Toilet Paper

'Tis the season for being grateful and for the giving of thanks. In fact, I am pretty sure there is a holiday right around the corner, one for which we are supposed to be grateful and to give thanks for all the things for which we are grateful and thankful. If memory serves right.

It's not uncommon to scroll through my news feed on Facebook these days and to read what others call their daily gratitude posts—the simple and the most important things in life for which they are appreciative.

As for the Angry White Loner, when it comes to gratitude, he thinks of two-ply toilet paper. Yes, really.

That's a pretty lame thing to be thankful for, some of you may think. And you would be right, assuming all of the world out there had things as good as we do here in the United States of America.

In case you haven't been to the Third World, I will let you in on a little secret: They don't have things as good as we do. Not even close.

Sure, France has its Eiffel Tower—in fact, two of the AWL's brothers and their spouses were there just a few days ago (not that I am bitter!)—Australia has its kangaroos and dingoes, and Japan has karaoke bars on pretty much every block. Beautiful things, all of them. But we truly live in a unique and a blessed land. There is no other place like it on Earth.

Why? Because of two-ply toilet paper.

Years ago, when I opened my mission call and read that I had been called to serve in the Peru Lima Central Mission, I knew exactly three things about Peru: The ruins of Machu Picchu were there, and it also had South America's highest concentration of Native Americans (Lamanites) and llamas. If you had asked me back then, I would have ventured a guess that they all rode llamas everywhere and had llamas for pets instead of dogs and cats and they all ate frequently at llama burger joints instead of McDonald's or Wendy's.

Granted, many of those preconceived notions turned out to be true. Llama tastes like chicken. And I did, in fact, make it to Machu Picchu—twice.

Nevertheless, the luster and the wonder soon vanished when I had my first glimpse of one of Lima's many shantytowns—Third World-like dumps where squatters live in homes literally made out of tin roofs and adobe bricks and plastic sheets and not much else, with dirt floors and no electricity in many places and unpaved roads with so much dust to kick up that I contracted conjunctivitis my first week there, along with several other bugs, and my ankles and feet became infested with fleas not once but twice. There are also frequent earthquakes and a destructive weather phenomenon, coined by Peruvian fisherman, called "El Niño."

Don't even get me started on Atahualpa's Revenge. You either know about it, or you don't.

This is where the issue of toilet paper comes in. Peruvians use toilet paper for every possible, conceivable reason. It's as valuable a commodity as towels are in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series of books. Not only do they use it for its already well-known properties, but they also use it as napkins and for taking notes and about 1,000 other things. One of the first things I learned in my first few days in the country is that you carry several sheets of toilet paper in your pockets at all times, because you never know when you will need some. If you run out, you restock. This is, in addition, because many toilets in Peru (1) don't have actual toilet seats to sit on and (2) are not stocked with any toilet paper at all.

The problem with Peruvian toilet paper? In two years, I never saw a single sheet of two-ply paper. One-hundred percent of it is single ply. I missed two-ply toilet paper. A lot. I also missed peanut butter, root beer, Dr Pepper, and hot showers.

And so, this Thanksgiving, that's what I'm feeling grateful for. Among many other things.