She was being a good, conscientious citizen; following the rules, staying home except to hike alone – at great distances from anyone else. In addition, she was honing her great writer skills-using this crisis as the perfect excuse to write every day – to reread, to attack those old manuscripts with a fine tooth comb. Now was the time for those WIPs to become works in print! After three days of reading and rewriting, Five Men Well (or, The Bed, or What Do You Really Want to Do? or Smelling Like a Rose, or The News and Ancient Literature) or whatever the heck she was going to call that manuscript, she laid it aside and took up another work in Progress; Feed My Sheep.

Ahhhh, nice voice. This one read smoothly. All the ephemera was historically correct for 1989. This she knew without a doubt for she was already an adult in 1989. She also knew the hard times lived by the main character were authentic. And then, right there on page 85; Twenty-two thousand, seven hundred twenty-four words into the story, 1989 hit her in the face like it was 2020: Toilet Paper!

***

After the first of the year, the food situation was particularly grim. Classes would not resume until January 13. The food pantry would open the following week. Nearly three weeks! Carrie shuddered at the looming specter of hunger. Already, they were out of toilet paper. During her last trip to the store, Carrie opted for food in place of paper products. Table napkins were no problem, they still had a nice stock of cotton ones from wedding gifts. Baby washcloths worked for Abby and could be thrown in the wash along with Abby’s diapers or training pants. Toilet paper for the adults presented a bigger challenge. Jon pointed out the obvious, there were no woolly mullein leaves to be had along the big city highways. Woolly mullein was well known to backpack campers and apparently cross-country motorcycle riders. Stranded in the big city in Texas with no woolly mullein, Carrie would have to think of something just as innovative. She wracked her brain. Somewhere from out of the past, memories of Carrie’s six-year-old summer came floating by. For the summer, she was allowed to go visit Grandma. Grandma was an old school “waste not, want naught.” Grandma was green out of a sense of frugality before it was popular to be green. That summer they lived in the sun, weeding around an acre of assorted vegetable plants; tending rows of corn, tomato plants, cucumbers. In the middle of the farmland stood an old outhouse, maintained and tidy, always painted to match the farmhouse two football field lengths away. In that outhouse, much to Carrie’s surprise, were two old Sears Roebuck catalogues. In the beginning, Carrie had complained to grandma that she could not read the catalogues because there was no light in the outhouse – besides, one of the books was obviously ripped.

“Oh, Caroline, honey,” responded Grandma, “those books are not for reading, they are old catalogues. They are in the outhouse for their second use – to serve cleanup duty. Just rip a page and use it as you would toilet paper.”

When she thought of it now, Caroline was horrified at the amount of petroleum based print that must have ended up contacting tender bottoms. Fortunately, many print dyes had been changed to organic material. She collected the giftwrap from Christmas just past. Thankful that most of it was white tissue paper, she cut it into small squares. These days, with organic dyes, the squares were only dangerous to the plumbing system. A wastebasket close-by addressed the disposal problem. Carrie threw the refuse in the neighborhood dumpster along with the usual garbage. When the squares ran out? Well, they would just have to use old patterns from Carrie’s sewing closet.

***

And just how should you be weathering this current COVID-19 crisis? Like it’s 1989, Baby!