The Day That Toilet Paper Ran Out…

I’m at the store and eyeing the toilet paper aisle. It’s empty. There are a couple of containers of the flushable wet wipes, but that is it. I knew I should have caved in to peer pressure, but I didn’t. When I get home I puruse Amazon. Amazon is sold out. AMAZON is SOLD OUT. It’s official. Armageddon has begun… and it starts with unwiped asses.

Suddenly I’m having a flashback. It’s 1985 and my family is technically homeless. We’re homeless in the sense that we do not have a home…. We are instead camped out in my mother’s office. My mother works for a small-town television station, she’s in sales. Her office is located in a small town ancient hotel. I say ancient because, well, it’s ancient. It was built in 1891 and if there were any renovations, they really kept them feeling authentic. Everything in it feels like a mix of Victorian and Colonial style, with dark wood and faded dusty carpet everywhere. The hallways are dimly lit and there’s a damp smell. It’s like living in a horror movie.

Once, while riding the elevator to the bottom floor with my sisters, it got stuck between the floors on our way down. The elevator felt old, it even had the original iron gate that closed with the door. When riding you had a great view of the brick interior wall zooming past as you went up or down, it was a downright claustrophobic experience, hitching a ride from floor to floor. When the elevator stopped moving between floors, the three of us screamed loud enough to wake any ghosts that had been sleeping in the walls. When the elevator finally did start working and delivered us to the bottom floor, the hotel manager was there to greet us with a not so friendly warning to not goof off in the elevator. Thus began my life of favoring stairs over elevators.

Since it was an old hotel and not really an office space, the office was just a combination of adjoining rooms. At that time in our lives we were homeschooled, so that meant spending our days hanging out in the furthest back room of our mother’s office. Unsupervised we spent time using the office Apple computer, where we addictively played the therapy session game:

Computer: I am the psychotherapist. Please, describe your problems.
Me: I am so sick of living in an old and haunted hotel.
Computer: I am sorry to hear you are sick. Can you tell me more about that…

When I wasn’t playing on the Mac, I was sneakily watching soap operas. My religious parents would not be happy to find out what unmarried Day of Our Lives Bo and Hope were up to.

At night, after the workday was done, we’d bring out our futons and sleeping bags. The office would be transformed into our bedroom. The television station was not prolific in the funds, so my parents cut costs whenever they could, thus the hotel office becoming an unofficial hotel and an official office.

When my dad worked his magic on the defunct and non-working shower, he had us run downstairs to make sure nothing was leaking on the grand piano in the ballroom. Another time, he had my sister and I take our purses downstairs to load up on toilet paper. Which meant we went down to the public restrooms and filled our purses with toilet paper.
Now suddenly, fast forward 30+ years and I realize my toilet paper burgling skills will come in handy. The world is suddenly like an apocalyptic movie… combining my childhood survival skills and everything I learned from watching movies like Shaun Of The Dead… I’m prepared. FUCK-A-DOODLE-DO! Keep calm! Take the car, Go to Starbucks, grab all the toilet paper, stuff it in my bag. Go home and wait for all of this to blow over…