Just because I started it two weeks ago (no, three. I mean, no four. No—Five weeks. No, now it’s finally posted/postdated here exactly a year and a day after i posted to email), this one is not—nor is likely to become—dated. But it would have been nice to get it written then, to get the out-of-the-vault one more context and continuity. But I guess sequential ramblings are context and continuity enough when time means very little.
(Aside—when you read Brit novels from mid-Victorian up through maybe the 30s and 40s, American characters are always stereotyped by/sneered at for their use of "I guess" or "I reckon." I guess I'm not as special as I'd like to think.)
Back to toilet paper. Just because the great toilet paper crisis is over doesn't mean it's over. It has left deep, possibly permanent scars. For one thing, there are the displays. (I have let this post down, having no pictures.) Toilet paper is now displayed on end caps, like a rare/time-limited special offer. It's not. Stocks of that green-wrapped, single roll commercial/institutional toilet paper are brazenly out front. So reassuring. See? We're not hiding it. You can walk right up to it and take some without standing in line. Or rationing (I assume. For reasons that will become apparent in the next paragraph, I have not really checked). Life is back to normal.
Or not. These rolls are definitely still life during wartime. The display piles look unappetizingly like a janitor's supply closet--hinting at all the comforts of public restrooms. Overflow huddles on the paper-good shelves, otherwise still empty. In some ways, it is more a sign of deprivation than no paper. Like East Berlin before the wall came down (reader, I was there). Empty shelves except for The People's Toilet Paper. If you ever wanted to hoard, this will discourage you. Or not--this is excellent bunker material, and will put you in the mood if you've ever regretted not having a bunker.
Or penitential material. Whether self-inflicted by the parsimonious martyr or meted out as punishment for the hoarder. It is the toilet-roll version of the hair shirt.
But that is for your ordinary folk. If you're a special person (in a n on-martyr/bunker way), you can say the password and get into Whole Foods. They have organic, all natural, fluffy-white toilet paper in all natural, organic clear plastic, as god intended. And you may have as much as you can afford.
But there are still scars. People are furtive. Take the guy standing in the cleaning goods aisle, casually weighing the merits of Mrs. Meyer's all-purpose biodegradable cleaner (Lemon Verbena) against those of BioKleen (Pine). Casual but serious, and I know because I was doing a little social distance shuffle while he deliberated. Then he looked around quickly, snatched two eight-packs of TP off the shelf (did I forget to mention that Mrs. Meyer's and BioKleen were right next to the TP?), and scuttled away like a cockroach, leaving the whiff of greed and shame.
The Germans actually have a word for it--Klopapierpeinlichkeit (toilet paper shame). Or, more accurately, I should say they have a word for it now, thanks to me.
As of August 14, 2021, this should be dated. But for me buying carries a frisson.