I was rooting around behind the seat of my pickup over the weekend and - lo! What is this?
Why, it’s a roll of toilet paper, that’s what it is.
And now, apparently, it is worth its weight in platinum.
I am pretty sure this specific roll of hockey tickets has been behind the seat since I bought the pickup three years ago.
I transferred the hydraulic jack, lug wrench and jumper cables from the old Chevy to the new, and no doubt pitched the toilet paper behind the seat, too.
Let’s just say I am a prepared kind of guy and sometimes find myself covering events in isolated locations.
Our forebears happily used leaves, corncobs and the occasional Montgomery Ward’s catalog, but hey. I consider toilet paper one of the great advances of the modern industrialized world.
Apparently, so do many other people.
We did some grocery shopping over the weekend and - sure enough - the store was out of toilet paper.
I’d been seeing reports of the TP outages around the country, but it’s one of those things that doesn’t fully hit you until you come face-to-face with it, sort of like the first time you see the ocean.
Happily, I can say that the TP shortage has had no impact on me. Yet.
That’s because I dislike shopping so intensely that I buy large quantities of things when I go.
That way, I don’t have to go shopping as often.
My practice is to buy hockey tickets in the largest bundle available, which is maybe 24 rolls. A couple of those and I have a severalmonth supply.
I do that with other items, too, like 20 pounds of rice, 10 pounds of pinto beans.
So, frenzy buying doesn’t make much sense to me unless the price of something is so low you just don’t want to miss out.
No doubt, there is a special type of psychology at work when we focus more on hoarding toilet paper than, say, things you can eat, like dry cereal or oatmeal.
But far be it from me to stand in the way of citizens enjoying a good frenzy.
So, if you were too late to frenzy shop in-store, I am putting my roll of pickup toilet paper up for auction.
Bidding starts at $15, cash.
Serious bidders only.