DR. WALLACE: I know that we have been suffering from some crazy weather this past year, particularly this winter across the United States, but my father's recent response to it was shocking to me. Last week, a freight truck pulled up at our long front driveway, backed in and unloaded a full pallet of toilet paper onto our driveway! My father rushed out of the house, opened the garage door and had the delivery driver roll this massive pallet straight into our garage!

I told my dad that not even the days of COVID caused us to need that much toilet paper, but he insisted it was the one thing we needed to stock up on in case we had to be self-sufficient for "six months or longer." My father is the type of guy who already has several generators on our property and an unbelievably well stocked basement, including enough food for our family of six for well over a year.

Now I'm embarrassed to go on bike rides with my girlfriends because if they come into our garage, they're going to see this massive pallet and they'll ask me all kinds of questions about it. What can I do about this? We live in a semi-rural location, but we're not that far away from really big stores like Walmart, Target or Costco. All three are within about a 20 minute drive from our semi-rural home. — It's Beyond Embarrassing, via email

IT'S BEYOND EMBARRASSING: Unfortunately, there's not much you can do in terms of your parents' decision to stock up, or perhaps overstock, your home with various supplies, including massive quantities of toilet paper.

If you're concerned about others seeing what exactly is on the pallet, such as your friends from school, perhaps speak to your mother about finding some sort of a large tarp or even a set of old, large blankets that can cover it up! Then at a glance it will simply appear to be boxes being stored.

I WANT TO EXPRESS MYSELF VIA WALLPAPER TOO!

DR. WALLACE: I'm a girl who's a senior in high school and all of my friends are going through a phase right now where they're putting up special wallpaper in their bedrooms to demonstrate their creativity and to create an interesting background to do social media posts and so forth. I have to admit, some of them look pretty cool.

I mentioned this to my parents, and they quickly shot the idea down by saying it was far too expensive, and they didn't want me to damage our walls as it may devalue our house. I asked my parents if we were planning to sell the house and move anytime within the next year or two and their reply was, "Of course not!"

Because of this, I thought their reasoning for denying me this opportunity was beyond weak. How can I convince them to let me do this, especially when all of my peer group of friends have already either done it or are now in the process of doing this right now? — Hoping for Expressive Wallpaper, via email

HOPING FOR EXPRESSIVE WALLPAPER: My first bit of advice would be to offer to pay for it yourself. Hopefully you've accumulated some savings either via an allowance, or some part-time work you may have done. If you don't have any savings at all, you could immediately get busy generating some cash by either of those two avenues I mentioned.

Regarding the concern your parents have about damaging your room, you could tell them that these days removable wallpaper is available, and you will limit your selection to that type of wallpaper only. It's designed to be a 'peel and stick' product, which was created to create for both easy application and removal, particularly for renters who wish to decorate their living spaces without creating permanent changes to the walls of the underlying property. This wallpaper does not use glue and can even be peeled off and reapplied if a mistake is made during the original installation. You could ask your mother or father to help you with the installation and start with only a very small area, so they can see just how easy these new products are to apply and also remove.

Dr. Robert Wallace welcomes questions from readers. Although he is unable to reply to all of them individually, he will answer as many as possible in this column. Email him at [email protected]. To find out more about Dr. Robert Wallace and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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