Why did people believe that toilet paper was the staple they needed to survive End Times? Did toilet paper represent that last scrap of normalcy they needed to hold on to?
My life with toilet paper:
1. When the COVID-19 pandemic first started, I, like many with a mind to possible shortages, drove to the nearest big bulk store. There, I was greeted by the sight of frenzied shoppers running back to their cars, awkwardly clutching two and three big bales of toilet paper to their chests, like a parent trying to hang on to a squirming child.
Sign up to know what's really happening by reading daily editorials and commentary by British Columbia's opinion leaders
Thanks for signing up!
A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.
The next issue of Vancouver Sun Informed Opinion will soon be in your inbox.
Some of them had a frenzied look in their eyes, as if they were fleeing from another toilet-paper hoarder who was inside making claim to the three-ply with the help of an AR-15. Others had the relieved, can’t-believe-my-luck look of a passenger on the Titanic who had managed to get into one of the lifeboats.
Why toilet paper, I wondered? Surely, if the apocalypse loomed, the sane person’s first stop in the grocery store would be the meat section while a standing rib roast could still be bought for less than the price of a new car. The next stop, of course, would be the wholesale plundering of the wine aisle.
But toilet paper? Why did people believe that was the staple they needed to survive End Times? Did toilet paper represent that last scrap of normalcy they needed to hold on to? Or did it speak to — sorry, it won’t happen again — some kind of anal retentive compulsion to maintain a measure of control, if only on the toilet?
I couldn’t then, and still can’t, think of a sane rationale for it. But eventually, the demoralizing stretches of empty grocery store shelves began to fill up, and toilet paper, and sanity, returned.
But good luck buying a standing rib roast now.
2. Like stacking a dishwasher, the use of toilet paper is one of those areas where the tensions of marital life intersect. When my wife stacks our dishwasher, for example, it appears as if a vandal has ransacked it. What kind of person, I ask you, persists in throwing the knives, forks and spoons higgledy-piggledy into the dishwasher rather than first separating them and placing them into their respective cutlery baskets? I’ll tell you what kind of person. AN INSANE PERSON!
On the other hand, my wife berates me for pulling on the toilet paper roll twice before wadding it, which is my habit, but which to her is symptomatic of the wanton profligacy that brought down the Roman Empire. The fact we have several month’s worth of toilet paper in the house does not seem to matter to her, nor does it matter to her that she is in the bathroom while I am, you know, on the toilet, because apparently it’s asking too much that a man, just once during the day, could get enough solitude so that he might have time to do the New York Times crossword puzzle in private for, say, an hour and a half.
3. My grandchildren are young enough that a roll of toilet paper is still an object of fascination for them rather than a means to an end, and I have gone into the bathroom after one of them has just left it to find a roll of toilet paper completely unwound and puddling on the floor, or found a length of the toilet roll unrolled directly from the dispenser into the toilet bowl as if it were a fishing line, or found the toilet clogged with so much toilet paper not because the grandchildren used it for the purpose for which it was meant, but because they wanted to test not only the absorptive property of toilet paper but my patience.
And recently, during the couple of weeks a granddaughter was staying with us, I got up every morning to find, without fail, exactly one perfect square of toilet paper placed on the floor beside the toilet bowl and one small torn piece of toilet paper near that square, as if that small piece were a moon orbiting a planet. It both charmed and alarmed me, because everything my granddaughter does charms me, and because I also wondered if I should be contacting a child psychologist.
4. Whenever I go to dinner at another couple’s house and find the end of the toilet roll neatly folded into a point, I am unsure as to whether I should be (a) envious of such attention to detail, (b) bemused by it, or (c) wondering how long their marriage can last given that at least one person in their relationship is obviously wound too tightly.
5. Speaking of marriage, we were dining with neighbours when the husband asked us if we unrolled our toilet paper from the inside or the outside. I thought it odd that he brought up this subject because, well, who gives a damn? But he was obsessed with the subject and believed how one rolls says something about their personality.
This may or may not be true, depending on what you believe on the internet. It was there I found an informal study done by “relationship expert” Gilda Carle, and author of the book Don’t Lie On Your Back For A Guy Who Doesn’t Have Yours.
Carle surveyed 2,000 people and asked them whether they self-identified as “dominant” or “submissive” while also asking them if they rolled their toilet paper over or under. She found an overwhelming correlation between the “dominant” rolling their toilet paper over and the “submissive” rolling theirs under. From this, Carle deduced that a household of two dominant over-rollers could lead to conflict, while a household of two submissive under-rollers would lead to nothing ever getting done.
Funny thing about that: During our dinner with the neighbours, the husband said he was an over-roller. His wife didn’t say one way or the other, but she must have been an over-roller, too, because a few years later, conflict ensued, divorce followed and their life together ended up in the crapper.
mcmartincharles@gmail.com