Or, where can it all be, and why?
Part 1
It was a dark and dreary night; the dark clouds hung low in the sky. Even the streetlights seemed dim as I drove down the avenue. I kept my eyes on the road, but still made myself aware of the stores I was passing. Then suddenly, a few
blocks down, I saw a beacon of light: a DOLLAR GENERAL! My heart beat faster, as my foot pressed harder on the accelerator. Fulfilment of my quest was near!
I swung my car into the almost empty parking lot, quickly got out and went through the door. I had to stop for just a moment to adjust my eyes to
the brightness of the store’s lights, and also to get my bearings. I saw my objective and quickly walked to it. To my bewilderment and surprise, the shelves
were empty. “Where is all the toilet paper?” I asked the cashier. With an astonished look she said, “I don’t know. I just don’t know, we just
seemed to have a run on it. I didn’t even get a chance to grab one for myself. Poof, they were all gone!” she continued.
I shook my head, said thank you and left. Surely this was just a fluke, I thought to myself as I got back into the car. I continued to drive, and as if it weren’t enough, the clouds opened up now, making this dreary night even more dreary - it
began to rain.
I stopped at a Walgreens ... no toilet paper. What was going on? This was quickly going from an idle purchase to a downright quest. No quest was going to better of me. Onward I drove. I continued to drive and make stops: Family Dollar, Ollie’s, Publix. Nada, not even one single sheet on the barren shelves. Sitting in the car, I began to worry a little. “What do I do now?” In a flash it came to me! The savior
of all saviors: 24-hour Walmart!! They always come through! My foot firmly on the gas pedal, I was there in minutes. Without hesitation, I went quickly to
my appointed area. I stopped dead in my tracks as I stared at the empty shelves where packages and packages of TP had once been. Dejected, I walked back to my car. I sat there, frozen. What could be happening? Why the rush and hoarding of TP? Granted, I thought, the entire world is going through a
crisis, with the coronavirus, but you don’t even get diarrhea with this, so what’s with the crazy rush on purchasing toilet paper.
Being a Buddhist, I found myself contemplating TP and its use.
Part 2: Questions
I began thinking about cavemen. What did cavemen do to keep themselves “fresh”? And after that, what did they do in the 1700’s, 1800’s? Just who was the genius who thought up TP, and when did we get toilet paper on a roll?
Deep, deep questions. We all know there is only one way to get answers to any question the world may have. GOOGLE!!
So, here I sit in my running car, in the dark, in a Walmart parking lot, with the rain coming down, contemplating the current biggest questions of the universe: Who invented TP and where is it all now.
Part 3: Answers
Let’s start with cavemen. Now, I don’t know any cavemen, nor do I know anyone who has ever known one. To my knowledge, there was no written language for thousands and thousands of years. I have also never seen a hieroglyphic that
shows a caveman on a ‘potty’ or even a bathroom. However, we do have someone who has allll the answers. You, of course, remember George
Orwell’s “1984” where big brother is watching. Now, in 2020, we know now
who big brother is: GOOGLE!!
According to Google, the cavemen used grass, mud, water, leaves and like ‘stuff.’ Let us move through the years to the 1600’s and 1700’s, what was used in those days? First let us recall what the fashions were at those times. Dresses with
petticoat after petticoat after petticoat underneath. Then underneath all of that,
something like knickers that went down to the knee. I’d like to know how they were even able to go to the bathroom, much less wipe themselves. But according to Google they were able to do both. And they were still using leaves, grass, and mud, the same as the cavemen. The very rich used wool, hemp and lace. Then when we became an agrarian society, the wipe of choice became CORN COBS. I can’t even contemplate using those. Corn cobs were the wipe of choice up until and
even after the invention of toilet paper in 1857. The genius who invented toilet paper for specific use in the bathroom was entrepreneur Joseph Gayetty. His TP was aloe infused manila hemp, sold in Kleenex-like boxes of 500 sheets for fifty cents. It didn’t go over well, because you didn’t have to pay for corn cobs.
When flushable toilets became the rage, corn cobs went out, TP came in. Toilet paper, as we know it, didn’t evolve until the 1930’s.
Well. here I was in a Walmart parking lot, darkness all around, and the clouds getting darker and the now pouring rain. It was now time for me to give up my quests for both knowledge and toilet paper and go home.
Google as usual had done its job and although filled with newfound knowledge, I was still toilet paperless.
As Scarlett O’Hara once said, “Tomorrow is another day!”
P
