COVID-19: The New Normal

Toilet paper and toilet paper alternatives

Holy crap Batman (pun intended) where has all the toilet paper gone? I swear, the single most predominate thing I've learned so far in 2020 is how much our lives revolve around poop. From where to store it, how to get rid of it and now how to wipe it off your backside when the product has vanished from shelves everywhere.

I thought when my snow-birding adventure came to an end, my life as it pertained to poop would return to normal. No longer would I need to scoop poop from horse pens. No more searching for an RV septic dump to empty  black water. No more searching for dog turds in my fellow snowbird's yards like some grotesque Easter egg hunt. I assumed everything concerning poop of any kind would vanish from my daily routine once I returned home. Not so. One major item that did vanish from the daily routine concerning poop, was toilet paper.

I don't know what is more shocking, that people are actually hoarding a product that is in no danger of becoming extinct, or the means that people will go to obtain it. Their very being has been altered by a 227 gram,or lack of, roll of 2 ply.

I comply with social distancing much like I live my normal day to day life. I saddle up my horses, load up the dogs and hit the trail. One of my first outings was the Weiser River Trail. I expected the vaulted toilet at the trail head to be void of T.P. It's almost always void of T.P, COVID-19 hysteria or not. What I did not expect was the senseless vandalism of the vaulted building itself.

It looked like somebody had taken a machine gun to the outside of it. I don't know if the Friends of the Weiser River trail had locked it up in anticipation of people steeling the toilet paper – or if somebody shot it up because there wasn't any T.P to begin with. Who knows what goes through the minds of the T.P possessed.

The first thing I thought was wow.....what a waste of ammo! If they would do that over a roll of rest stop 1 ply – what would they do over something needed for actual survival? I hope they wasted their last bullet because those kind of people shouldn't be carrying.

I'm learning just how little T.P a person actually needs on most occasions. Gone are the days of the double handed spin of the roll...releasing yards of a protective barrier between hand and the nether regions. As I sat on the cold porcelain throne, meticulously folding two squares four times over to create some semblance of thickness - dad's voice haunts me from the past: “Two squares...that's all you need. Two squares!” Two squares? My mom, sister and I nod wide-eyed in pretend agreement: “Sure dad...two squares. You bet.”

It's been several weeks since the beginning of the great T. P-apocalypse of 2020. Store shelves are as bare of paper products as when it all started. I got lucky once. I was pushing my cart down an isle that should not have had paper products according to grocery store merchandising 101. Maybe somebody picked up 2 packs on a 1 pack limit and set this one on a random shelf. I reached for it, placed it in my cart and continued shopping. I subconsciously placed other items over the pack to conceal it from other shoppers view. Because they look. Oh yes, they look. Every shopper looks into every other shoppers cart. You can't help it. And we judge each other on the contents of those carts. That lady has enough cat food to feed every cat in the county....hopefully she actually has cats. Those people there are going to have spaghetti for the next 6 years. I tried not to judge the man with twelve loaves of bread dangling by the bag ends in each hand. It was hard not to when he instructed his wife to “grab some more...there's still some left!”

I can no longer deal with the insanity. I've stopped searching for toilet paper and toilet paper alternatives altogether. If I run out before this is over, I will install a bidet and learn how to speak french.