In America, Hitting Bottom Isn’t So Bad

The same rules apply to the toilet paper industry as to any other big business:

To succeed, you must start at the bottom and work your way up.

With that end in mind, representatives of the exciting new Seattle-based Purely Cotton toilet paper company rolled into Spokane on a promotional tour with their cuddly, life-size product character - Mr. Cotton.

What’s exciting about toilet paper, you ask?

Why, according to the 11-page press release sent to the newspaper, Purely Cotton is the world’s first all-cotton toilet paper.

Cotton. That conjures up an uncomfortable image of performing your bathroom duties with an Oxford dress shirt.

But thank goodness we’re not talking about the world’s first all-hemp toilet paper. Now that would really be uncomfortable!

There’s no modesty to be found in the Purely Cotton press packet. It calls its invention the “most revolutionary new product since people began using paper instead of corncobs. …”

Most members of the liberal media would try to keep a lid on this kind of sensitive material. But my city editor handed me the packet with orders to get the straight poop on Mr. Cotton.

Interviewing a toilet paper mascot turned out to be much tougher than it sounds, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Mr. Cotton is one of those happy, wholesome, just-for-kids characters along the same lines as the Pillsbury Dough Boy, Chuck E. Cheese and Joe Camel.

He’s supposed to be a cotton bud. Except with his green suit, sash, top hat and pointy shoes, he looks like a leprechaun egg.

The strange creature made his Spokane debut not too far from the protesters who gathered last Wednesday night outside the Spokane Arena during Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf’s speech.

Ah, if only our boys had had cotton toilet paper when they tried to wipe out Iraq.

I caught up with Mr. Cotton a day later as he danced and whirled at an entrance to Riverfront Park. Excited kids on school field trips surrounded Mr. Cotton as if he were a famous rock star or Bob Dole.

“Mr. Cotton is a child magnet,” says Purely Cotton marketing guy Brian Butte.

Brian Butte? There is a God.

“Yeah, yeah, no matter what you say, it would be nothing I haven’t heard before,” says the toilet paper pooh-bah.

“Er, we prefer to use the term ‘bathroom tissue,”’ adds Butte.

I’ll bet we do.

I don’t know Charmin from Shine-ola, but I had a mission: Find out what sinister force would drive an otherwise sane individual to don a 40-pound costume and become a shill for toilet paper.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t do much of an interview because I don’t speak Tibetan.

As if this story couldn’t be any weirder, Mr. Cotton is played by a Tibetan immigrant who doesn’t speak English and was Butte’s lawn guy in Seattle.

“It was raining one day and I felt sorry for him,” explains Butte, who invited the man, Pema Lama, to lunch and offered him the Mr. Cotton gig.

America - still the land of opportunity.

“Are you being held prisoner? Do you want me to call the po-leece?” I yell into Mr. Cotton’s grinning face.

Silence.

A few minutes later, Lama takes a break and climbs out of Mr. Cotton. “I’m happy,” he says in broken English. “Kids like.”

Lama’s breather gives me a chance to become an investigative reporter like Geraldo. With Butte’s help, I lower the bulky costume over my head and upper torso.

Suddenly, I am Mr. Cotton.

Peering through the eye holes, I wobble up to a couple of gawking tourists and do a little Mr. Cotton dance.

“I’m Bob Dooole,” I holler in my best Dole impersonation. “Bob Dole couldn’t be president. So now Bob Dole sells toilet paper.”

The tourists roar with laughter. I do another Mr. Cotton dance and bow.

America, what a country!

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo