I Sent My Mom Toilet Paper For Christmas

It’s true. I sent my mom 24 rolls of Presto Ultra-Soft toilet paper for Christmas. Gift-wrapped mega-rolls, to be precise. They’re plush and thick!

I can think of only one explanation for this bizarre turn of events. 

Blame it on Alexa.

She’s always trying to put things in my Amazon cart. Each time I ask her to put something on my shopping list, she tries to persuade me to buy it from the corporate behemoth who named her.

For example, if I say, “Alexa, we need toilet paper,” she will reply, “I put toilet paper in your Amazon shopping cart.”

In order to prevent such mishaps, I must be very particular about the wording of my request: “Alexa, please add toilet paper to my shopping list.” That phrasing gets the right result every time.

Apparently I wasn’t paying attention when she informed me that she had placed the 24 jumbo rolls in my shopping cart. And I didn’t notice that they were still there when I ordered a copy of Gary Shteyngart’s “Lake Success” and had it delivered to my mom’s apartment in Minneapolis for Christmas. When I requested gift wrapping, Amazon took the liberty of wrapping the toilet paper as well as the book.

I noticed that Amazon sent two separate emails informing me that my package had been delivered the next day. This was puzzling, of course, but I didn’t bother to read the fine print. I figured that maybe I had sent the book twice by mistake.

Imagine mom’s surprise when she opened the bulky package, and imagine my surprise upon reading the text she sent me moments later: “You sent me a year’s supply of toilet paper!”

In keeping with the spirit of the season, mom’s been handing out rolls to the staff at Becketwood, the cosy retirement community she calls home.