“Today.

Today is a day that will live forever in my mind, heart, and soul. For, today, I achieved a victory, not to be taken lightly. A victory so momentous, so stupendous, so unimaginably grandiose, that one would have to go back centuries – perhaps millennia – to find it’s superior or even its equal.” – The Very William H. Kammerer, Jr., Esq. (Not) April 18, 2020

Yes, it happened. And it was really pretty much a shock – completely unexpected.

It happened like this…

(Begin fade-in-dream-sequence music)

As we are accustomed to doing on any given Saturday afternoon, Judy and I exited our home to make our weekly trip to the grocery store. We had a shortlist of needs and planned to be out of the market within about 15 minutes to give us time to retrieve the take-out order of Spaghetti (for Judy) and Calzone (for me) from one of our favorite Italian restaurants. They, of course, are not open for sit-down business during this time of social distancing, but they are taking orders over the phone. 

In order to speed up our shopping process, Judy and I split the list. I went one direction and she another, agreeing to meet in the ice cream aisle when we had acquired our assigned items.

I was headed for the milk/cashew milk/coffee-mate section of the store when it occurred to me that I hadn’t yet had my weekly disappointment in the most popular aisle in any store since the current pandemic began…

Yes, the paper goods aisle.

As I approached that section of the store, I noticed the usual bare shelving units, completely devoid of even dust at this late time of the week. 

Except for waaayyy down at the other end of the aisle. Down where the paper towels are located. Except across the aisle from the paper towels. 

Where the baby diapers reside.

For some reason, I decided to take a detour and head that way on my way to where I needed to go next. 

As I approached the baby diapers, I looked more closely at the blue and white packagers (about a dozen, or so) and realized that they weren’t diapers, but appeared to be paper towels.

I stopped.

I looked a bit more closely because I didn’t recognize the brand of paper towels. 

I, literally, put my face to within about six inches of the package, trying to discern, purely out of curiosity, how many towels there were inside the package. We are accustomed to getting them in packages of eight rolls, and these seem a bit like a two roll package. I began calculating the price difference between the four packages of two rolls of this brand and one package of eight rolls of our usual brand (Bounty) and figured that the larger package was the better buy.

But something didn’t seem right. Something was off…

I picked up the package I was inspecting and looked at it more closely. I noticed that, If I held the package at just the right angle, in just the right light, and with just the right side facing me, there were more than two rolls of paper towels contained within. There were, in fact, six rolls of paper towels! But they were each only about one third the width of normal towels. 

My first thought at this realization was, “Boy, these are totally useless,” so I started searching for a description of what sort of function they could possibly serve.

I found things like, “Ultra Clean Care,” “Strong Cleaning Ripples,” “Texture Resistante,” “Papier Hygienique,” “Une Proprete Rafraichissante,” and “Debarbouillettes Jetables=.”

I was thinking, “What in the name of all that is Holy is this stuff?” None of this made any sense to me.

And then, just as I was about to place the package back on the shelf, one of my eyes – I’m really not sure which one, but one of them, for sure – caught some fine print that both of them had previously missed. 

I stood there, staring. Something wasn’t quite computing, but I knew that I had to be patient, if for no other reason than I had already wasted more of my fifteen minutes than was safe to admit to Judy, so I kept glaring at the letters assembled before my uncomprehending eyes, waiting for the correct translation of whatever language they were attempting to communicate in. 

And then, as if struck by lightning, it hit me! The letters were speaking English – and they were saying:

TOILET PAPER!!! 

I actually bobbled the package and almost dropped it to the floor!

How could this possibly be? Wasn’t toilet paper illegal any more? I mean, when was the last time you saw toilet paper in any store or online or in your bathroom?

Once I recovered from the initial shock of my discovery, I immediately ran to the ice cream aisle, where I found Judy. You should have seen the look on her face when I waved the TP in her face and placed it into the basket!! I could tell that she was excited, too, because she immediately asked me, “Where’s the milk?”