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Toilet Paper Supplies are Wiped Out
“DON’T PANIC!!!!”
-Corporal Jones, Dad’s Army
Toilet paper supplies are wiped out. Oh, yeah, as if no one ever made that joke before.
The other day I was crossing a parking lot when I noted a couple of suspicious characters. They were moving fast, looking around anxiously as if they were expecting an ambush or maybe planning one. And then I noticed the shopping cart top heavy with loads of toilet paper they were rushing to their car.
(Voiceover in a Lorne Greene basso profundo of doom: “It begins.”)
Once upon a time I met a retired Royal Air Force colonel who had been a young officer during the Second World War. Among other topics he mentioned that on the 3rd of August 1939 the coffee disappeared from English life almost as soon as the first sirens stop wailing.
In the USA, it’s the toilet paper.
(Soundover: an air-raid siren.)
No one has ever explained why, in a time of crisis, whether hurricanes, fuel shortages, power outages, street violence, tornadoes, or the several diseases that strike us every decade or so, the immediate response of the American people is to hoard toilet paper.
Sometime you think that if God manifested the end of the world a great many of our people would rush out to buy toilet paper.
Like the annual migrations of motivational speakers, the hoarding of the soft scented stuff is a mystery.
Perhaps many Americans build toilet-paper forts and guard them with their AR-14.2 Nuclear Assault Rifles, ready to fight off wild-eyed albino Russian paratroopers greedy for our Yankee Doodle bottles of freedom-loving hand sanitizer.
That evening I encountered a young woman who reported that she could not find any toilet paper, but happily she has a six-month-old and if her routine supply of the squeezable stuff wipes out she could shred the occasional disposable diaper for the purpose.
Let no one say that the rising generation has no problem-solving skills.
The news reports that some schools will stop classroom instruction for the next week or two, and that lessons will be sent via the InterGossip.
In a spirit of service I would like to contribute a distance-learning arithmetic problem with a real-world application:
If Mommy has 5 rolls of toilet paper in the closet and brings 12 more rolls of toilet paper home from the store, is Daddy still sitting on the couch and drinking (sody pop)?
Y’know, if I get the coronavirus thing and die I’m going to feel just plain silly.
In all seriousness, do what your health care professional (NOT Dr. Google or NP Facebook) says, take all precautions, and as the old wartime poster says, “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
-30-
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