On The Inevitability of Blue Toilet Tablets

I'm a man of simple pleasures. I'm fine with any old single malt scotch - and I'll even drink the regular ten year blended stuff. My goat cheese does not need to be imported from France and I'll even eat store-bought hummus.

In that spirit of simple joys I submit that there are few things more pleasant than walking into a bathroom and seeing blue water in the toilet.

Fancy fixtures are a nice plus.

Bathroom attendants are many minuses.

When you see blue water, you know that someone is keeping up with the cleanliness of the toilet bowl on a regular basis. It's a break from the ordinary water-colored water that you normally find. It makes you feel special, because someone is going out of their way to actively enhance your bathroom-using experience. But not in a weird way.

Unfortunately like so many before me I've often wondered, "This thing in front of me is perfect as it is. Can it be made better?"

Can I break into the toilet bowl tablet market with a rainbow variety of new colors?

I can't. And you can't either. And here's why:

Primary Colors

Blue is a primary color. You don't have to mix anything to get to it; it simply is. Even more important to the field of toilet bowl water color science is that nothing blue comes out of people's bodies. This is critical, as you'll soon see. Our other primary colors are yellow and red. Either of those would be fine if you wanted your guests to think:

• You never flush the toilet
• You're expelling blood

Obviously that's no good. Those don't create the impression of freshness, cleanliness or "wanting to stick around" ness.

Secondary Colors?

"Very well!" you concede, although you still aren't convinced. "Let's take leave of this grade school nonsense and graduate to real colors."

Okay, let's. I'll cross out the components of secondary colors that, as established above, won't work.

Green = Blue + Yellow
Purple = Blue + Red
Orange = Red + Yellow

Orange is out completely, and green and purple turn back to blue if you remove the unworkable colors.

Tints? Screens?

What about light red? Or a nice lavender? If you bought a tablet that was designed to produce a constant pale shade until it ran out, then *you* would know that lavender toilet water means "Clean!".

Your guests would just see what they assume would be a blue tablet - the standard - mixed with red and then used to the point that it was on its last legs. They would not be feeling good feelings.

What Now?

Nothing, now. Many toilet scientists have gone before me and the sum total of all of their efforts is "blue". There will never be another color of clean toilet water.

We can all sleep a bit easier now knowing that this vexing riddle has been solved.