I walk into the bathroom, and David is standing in front of the toilet with a mound of toilet paper in his hands. It's enough for the base of a snowman, a really big snowman.

Debby: Honey! That's too much! You can't put that in the toilet. You'll break it.

David: But I like to.

Debby: You'll break the toilet. I know I made that mistake one time. I put all that toilet paper in and tried to flush it. Water and poop spilled all over the floor. We had to get a plumber. It was awful and expensive. (I am only sort of making this up. A visiting Japanese teacher once clogged my mom's toilet this way, and besides being wasteful, I do believe this much toilet paper is going to get us a serious jam.)

David looks thoughtful, not closed off: But they could fix it?

Debby: Yes, but it was really yucky and expensive. Here let's do this together. This is how much you use. (We measure a couple feet against his body.) We can do five wipes like this and then we need to flush. (We wipe five times, flush, and repeat.)

It's not like we haven't variations on this conversation many times. David likes to send the toilet roll spinning until there is a big heap on the floor. I have tried to explain logically, wrestled the paper away from him, and gotten in plenty of fights about it. I don't know why he chose to listen and accept today. I'm pretending it's a small step in the right direction.