The first couple of weeks I spent at OCU were difficult to say the least. Every day I discovered a new thing I had forgotten to bring with me to college: trash bags, toilet paper, a coffee maker, a sufficient amount of underwear. You name it, I forgot it. One thing I didn’t expect to need however, was a paper towel holder.

Many times, puddles covered the bathroom floor as I desperately searched for something to dry my hands on, and as weeks passed, I grew weary of dripping hands. That’s when I decided to come up with a solution. After several minutes of pondering on my bed, I ran to my suitemate’s room and shouted, “DO YOU HAVE ANY STRING?”. She gave me a puzzled look and hesitantly pulled a roll of twine from her dresser drawer. I quickly snatched it from her hand and went to work on what I can only describe to be a masterpiece. When I was done, I stood back to admire my work and called her into the bathroom. “But does it work?”, she asked.

I shrugged my shoulders, not knowing the answer to her question. She tugged at the end of a towel and the roll didn’t budge. Seeing the disappointment on my face, an idea crossed her mind, and she told me to wait where I stood. After watching her leap to her bedroom, I heard the shuffling of items in a desk drawer. She came back with a roll of tape, and we fumbled with the string, a maze of tape revealing several failed attempts at turning my aesthetic design into a functional one.

After several more minutes of no luck, we returned to our respective rooms in defeat. I sat on my bed with my head hung low, and stood up to retrieve something from my closet, when I saw it. I yelled my suitemate’s name in the same manner as Archimedes shouting “Eureka!”. She met me in the bathroom, and I lifted it up to her. The light at the end of the tunnel was there before her. A coat hanger.

We nodded our heads in silent agreement on a plan of action and I broke the wire to create an opening for the paper towel roll. She pushed it through, bending the ends to keep it in place, and hung it on the bathroom wall. It was perfect, so we thought. Anticipating a successful roll test this time, my suitemate tugged on the paper towels excitedly. Our test was disappointing to say the least, but when we left the bathroom this time, our spirits were filled with determination rather than defeat.

I paced around my room until it hit me. We were not limited to mere wire coat hangers. Cardboard tube hangers were just as important. So I picked a cardboard tube hanger out of my closet, pulled the tube out of the wire, stuck the paper towel roll in the hanger, and pushed the wire back into the cardboard. Then I hung the final product on the bathroom hook, and tested it one last time.

It functioned beautifully, and I rushed to my suitemate’s room to show her our accomplishment. We met by the sinks again, and stared at the finished product, both proud of each of our creative contributions and hard work. It was a moment that I’ll never forget, because a simple, hand-crafted paper towel roll had brought us so much joy. We didn’t require any money to make our own fun, and most importantly, something useful! I had the paper towel holder I so desperately needed, and both my suitemate and I had a blast creating it. Who knows? Maybe in the future, we could come up with something even better. Till next time.