It took me exactly one day to polish off all of my COVID-19 snacks.
I had a few peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, while watching the news reports.
It’s shameful because I outran an 80-year-old woman for the last jar of Jif, which was low sodium and sweetened with natural honey.
Belly full, I’m sitting at home alone questioning my sanity.
Here’s why, I am concerned with catching this COVID-19 virus. My fear is manifested
My fear is manifested in the fact that I’ve bought Irish Spring soap and Everclear alcohol, two products I don’t ever use, because I couldn’t get a hold of hand sanitizer.
While I’m so concerned with being contaminated, I didn’t think twice about buying tamales from the back seat of someone’s car on the way home.
I’ve also bought shrimp and steaks out of the back of someone’s pickup in the past.
Normally, I stockpile twoply rolls from my favorite warehouse club store. However, this hasn’t been a usual month in my household.
I’ve been gone for weeks on a job assignment and I’ve neglected my husband, son and household, which is why we found ourselves without toilet paper during this world-wide pandemic.
When the man-of-house and our son ran through the novelty toilet paper, which had a musical score printed on it, they decided to venture out to the grocery store for regular tissue.
This was last Wednesday, when the entire nation was making a run on the rolls. See picture below.
He wasn’t taking into account that we were kneedeep in the COVID-19 pandemic or that Americans like me were losing their minds and hoarding anything they could get their hands on, including toilet tissue.
We Americans plow through seven billion rolls a year or 50 pounds per person, according to the National Resources Defense Council. The U.S., while just four percent of the world population, accounts for more than 20 percent of global TP consumption.
In 1973, Johnny Carson made a joke about toilet tissue shortage on the “Tonight Show” and citizens panicked and cleared the shelves for one month based on rumors.
I can’t imagine what we did before Joseph Gayetty introduced his sheets of aloe-infused hemp back in 1857 to America, so I looked it up.
We used books, newspaper and the “Farmer’s Almanac.” The Sears catalog was a wildly popular option until it went glossy, as were corncobs and the wealthy dabbed their derrières with wool or lace.
When the man of the house called to tell me he couldn’t find a single roll in the city of Fredericksburg and asked me to pick one on up on the way home, I sprung to action.
I couldn’t understand why this man was not in a state of panic and I also couldn’t comprehend who in the world would only buy a single roll of TP.
As we spoke, I got into my car and drove to the Brookshire Brothers grocery store in Rockdale.
The shelves were bare but not empty.
I picked out a nine-pack only because there was a sign printed with all capital letters, “LIMIT ONE PACKAGE PER CUSTOMER.”
That sentence nearly brought me to my knees.
At that moment I understood the knife-wielding men who robbed a delivery man of 600 rolls of toilet paper outside a supermarket in Hong Kong in February.
Trying not to give in to the rising panic, I laid my single package on the conveyor belt and proclaimed, “I’m not crazy. I really am out of toilet paper.”
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