It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World

If you had told me that sometime within my lifespan, shelves in every store imaginable would be stripped empty of toilet paper, I would have laughed in your face.

If you had told me that apparently perfectly sane people believe that toilet paper has magical powers that keep one from getting sick, I would have said you needed to be put into a mental asylum.

And now both of those things are true.

I don’t understand the rolls on toilet paper at all. Exactly how is a roll of tissue thin paper going to protect you from getting sick? Is it the use of it? Or do you need to simply have a stash of it somewhere in your house? And how many, exactly, do you need to have to be sure you are thoroughly protected from said virus? With the way people are buying it, the number must be somewhere in the hundreds. For those of us who have a grand total of three rolls remaining in their house (and, so, I guess, are more likely to get sick), I have one request: can those who are stockpiling it against the day of Armageddon please leave a pack or two for the rest of us? I don’t need a lot. Three or four rolls last a week in my house, so just a dozen or so is good. By then, hopefully, I’ll be able to find it in the store again.

In all honesty, it’s not the lack of toilet paper that bothers me. Some will show up and we’ll make do. It’s simply the frustration of how insanely crazy this coronavirus has made the world I live in. All I’m trying to do is supply a few weeks of groceries for my family. Not anything extravagant. I don’t need twenty of every possible can good in the store. Or ten packages of chicken. Nor do I need to buy a freezer in order to stock up (yes, I saw someone doing that). A few extra things on hand never hurts. After all, the reality of living is you never are sure what could happen tomorrow. Which, I think, is why I’m frustrated to tears over the insanity this virus has caused. Tomorrow I could go for a walk and get hit by a car. Tomorrow I could catch the flu, have complications, and die. Tomorrow the Lord could give me a stroke or a heart attack. The list could go on and on. But to live in anxiety every moment over what might happen or what I might catch tomorrow is an awful way to live. And so I’m not going to get anxious about this either.

Honestly, I’m not trying to push aside what may be a very serious virus (certainly for some people, it is). Nor am I mocking those who may be sincerely worried about it for one reason or another. But this world is a sinful place. Pandemics, wars, natural disasters and any number of other horrendous things have happened in the past, have occurred in my lifetime, and will continue to go on when I am dead. To stock up on toilet paper just because you think the world is going to end is not going to do a thing. So, do something practical instead. Read your Bible. Pray. Spend time with the kids you’re now stuck with. And stop panicking. It’s not helping you, and it’s certainly not helping anyone else.