For the Love of Toilet Paper - A Social Experiment

A couple months ago, my two Christian housemates and I excitedly hypothesized about all the great community-building things we would do in our complex. Basically, we epically failed. But we did do this (and will hopefully continue to do more in the future):

There are 22 units in our housing situation. It is two rows of eleven joined houses. The entrances face each other and have a roof overhead. One would think this arrangement would encourage neighbourly affection. It doesn't. Everyone is as cold as a true-blue suburbanite.

We also live in a somewhat terrifying part of town. In September, there were two sexual assaults that took place within a 5 minute walk from my house, one just outside my complex. These occurences didm't encourage neighbourly affection either.

So we wanted to change the status quo by giving every one of the houses a little gift and an encouraging note.

"What does everyone need?" we thought outloud amongst ourselves. People might throw away food fearing it was poisoned. So we decided on... toilet paper!

Thus, we wrapped 21 rolls in blue tissue paper held together with yellow curled ribbon. We attached a note that followed structure of, "Dear (house #), We hope you like your unorthodox gift! We'd also like to have you over for supper. If you want to do this too, please come knock on our door or leave us a note if we're not home. Sincerely, (us)"

I must admit we came up with this idea weeks ago. But we are busy. (Though, mostly, we are lazy.)

Feeling convicted at our Thursday night Irresistible Revolution book study, we finally finished our project at 2:30am that night. We filled a laundry basket with the tp and went from door to door in our complex, putting our presents in the mailboxes. It was blissful and we felt like Christmas elves.

The next morning my housemate overheard a conversation between a guy who lives in our complex and someone who does not. Apparently the guy was pretty weirded out. Ba ha ha. Its only to be expected, but we hoped that wouldn't be EVERYONE'S response.

AND IT WASN'T! Around 3 o clock the next day a girl with black and purple dread locks came to our door. She thanked us for the present and said she and her housemates would love to come for supper! And they're coming on Wednesday.

It. Gets. Better.

So, Saturday night (Halloween) I found myself unexpectedly alone in the house. Ever since L'Abri I've found I get lonely easily, which is odd since for years before that I was definitely overly reclusive. But anyway, so I was feeling sorry for myself when around 8:30, dreadlock girl came to the door! She offered me pumpkin seeds and we talked.

And then I kind of invited myself over to her place and we watched the Nightmare Before Christmas and a transvestite comedian. But mostly we talked. And she brought up God, really early into the conversation, actually. Interestingly, we have similar stories, both disillusioned by the Church, but she took one road and I took the other. It was amazing though in the sense that I was actually able to share my journey with her pretty thoroughly, and oddly enough I wasn't even flustered. It was a really chill evening.

We also talked about drugs and especially marijuana. They're really passionate about pot at that house, which, while different than my background, is okay with me. We discussed the spiritual aspects of pot-smoking for quite some time. It makes me thankful I read a biography on Bob Marley and watched the documentary Grass. I think those educational experiences helped me come off a little more balanced in my views of pot than I would have otherwise.

Yay life!

Yay experiments!

Yay God!