Here we are, locked down again. And here we are, once again, hoarding toilet paper. If I live to be 100 years old, I will never understand the impulse the load up on toilet paper when faced with a crisis. Last night, a power outage struck Santa Fe’s south side. When it hit, my first instinct wasn’t to take inventory of toilet paper. However, in looking around grocery stores lately, it appears that most people’s first thought is to ensure that their bathroom experience ends as shiny as possible. After all, in a crisis, having a shiny hiney is the apparently most important thing to have at one’s disposal.
I’ve done a lot of crisis work over the years and in all the situations i’ve faced, not once has anyone asked me if I am part of the “wipe ‘til it’s white” club. Nor have I ever considered the cleanliness of anyone’s backside during their respective crisis. As a matter of fact, I’ve been in situations where my underpants were lucky to have escaped clean; having crates of toilet paper at my disposal wouldn’t have mattered.
Yet, here we are, facing a lock down and there is a shortage of toilet paper at the grocery stores. In thinking about this, I do have a favor to ask of anyone who hoards toilet paper when threatened: Please don’t ever invite me to you home. Like, ever. I have no idea what you eat that would drive your survival instinct towards toilet paper, but I don’t want to know. I can’t imaging that your bathroom is clean because there’s plenty of scrubbing bubbles on the shelves, so the amount of toilet paper that’s being used isn’t correlating with cleaning the toilet. Which is the another reason I don’t want to visit you: your bathroom is being heavily used, especially the toilet, and you don’t appear to be cleaning it as well as you should. there’s evidence to suggest that Covid spreads in, well, toilet stuff, and going to your house, eating what you eat, and then using your dirty toilet puts me at high risk for Covid.
Maybe someone will be able to explain the toilet paper hoarding instinct to me one of these days. But until then, I hope my hiney is as shinny as it needs to be. If it isn’t, it’s because I couldn’t find any stupid toilet paper.
