Columnist Lisa Ferguson: Sun Lite for Jan. 26, 2004

Lisa Ferguson

Monday, Jan. 26, 2004 | 8:07 a.m.

Watered-down history

Go ahead and keep Christmas, enjoy Easter and have Halloween: We at Sun Lite prefer to celebrate obscure holidays the more bizarre, the better. A quick check of the Internet revealed that today has been designated Love Your Toilet Day.

By our estimations, it just doesn't get any more ridiculous than that.

Unfortunately, what the Information Superhighway didn't flush out was any details about the holiday or its history. Whose idea was it in the first place to pay homage to commodes? How exactly does one go about loving a toilet? (We surmised that must be a matter of personal preference.)

In any case, with a few keystrokes, our computer screen did overflow with all sorts of toilet trivia, courtesy of the plunging wizards at Roto Rooter, who last year unclogged or otherwise repaired 75,000 toilets nationwide.

The plumbing company, on its website (www.rotorooter.com), blows the lid off myths surrounding Thomas Crapper, long credited for devising toilet technology.

It's speculated he was most likely born in September 1836 and died on Jan. 27, 1910. He worked as what else? a plumber from 1861 through 1904 and, though he held the patents for nine plumbing products in England, Crapper did not invent the toilet.

That distinction goes to Albert Giblin, an employee of Crapper who, in 1819, had a patent for something called the Silent Valveless Water Waste Preventer, which gave the toilet its ability to flush.

As the story goes, Crapper bought the patent from Giblin and marketed it himself. Finally, how is it that Crapper's name became a slang word for "toilet"? It seems doughboys in England during World War I saw water tanks printed with the phrase "T. Crapper Chelsea" on them, and coined the term and, as the Roto Rooter jingle singers might croon to the tune of the company's trademark song, away went Crapper's good name down the drain.

Get your paper

On a very related note, the makers of Quilted Northern bath tissue recently released the fluffy findings of the company's self-titled 2004 Bathroom Confidential report.

Turns out 63 percent of those surveyed for the report said they leave the bathroom door open when the loo is in use when they're home alone, that is. Meanwhile, 53 percent said they tear off between 4 and 6 sheets of toilet paper during each, um, visit to the potty. And only 51 percent are tidy about it that's the number of people who fold the toilet tissue prior to use, versus the 49 percent who admit to crumpling the wad. Of those, 58 percent of men report they're folders, while 39 percent of women are crumplers.

At last, we have an answer to the age-old question: Should T.P. roll under or over? Seventy-two percent of respondents prefer the view from the top, including such celebs as actresses Debi Mazar and Karen Duffy, and hunky "Trading Spaces" handyman Ty Pennington, who reports that he often retreats to the bathroom to play his guitar.