Thursday, 3/20

I wonder if they've used up all their toilet paper yet?

Happy anniversary month, by the way. It was five years ago this month that our world started to fall apart, as the sports leagues cancelled games, schools started to close, the US & the EU shut its borders, and Tom Hanks—TOM HANKS!--informed the world he had contracted Covid. It only took a few days before everything was shut down and our world has yet, in some ways, to recover.

Ah. Good times.

Of course, even though it was five years ago that things really struck home, we had been dealing with the growing impact of the burgeoning pandemic even before that. I'm thinking, specifically, on perhaps the most surreal aspect of those early days, the fact that people were going out and clearing store shelves of toilet paper.

Five years later still don't get WHY they did it, but that's neither here nor there.

The toilet paper “shortage” (there really wasn't a shortage until some people decided that it might be a good time to go out and buy a thousand rolls) led to lots of bemused stares, hundreds of late night TV jokes, and some creative ideas for people. I recall walking down Front Street in Marquette right before everything was shut down and seeing this sign--

I have no idea if it actually worked as a promotion, but it sure was a heck of a great idea.

Of course, as it turned out the toilet paper “shortage” was the least of our worries as things fell apart five years ago. As I mentioned in here a couple of weeks ago things changed so quickly over so many days that for the first month or so of the pandemic just seems like a blur. Even from gaining a little (just a little) perspective over those five years it's still kind of hard to believe, especially (and probably) because we're still dealing with the fall out from it.

But that's neither here nor there. Assuming that you use two rolls of toilet paper a week (and that's just an assumption; I could be totally wrong about that number) sometime around the 10^th anniversary of the pandemic—early 2030—could loom as a significant date.

Why, you ask? Well, I answer, if you do the math, that'll be just around the time people who bought 1,000 roles of toilet paper back in 2020 might need to go out and buy some more.

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com)