Coronavirus is Causing Toilet Paper Fights Across Australia

Human civilization is essentially a social contract. Each of us, every day of our lives, make a million decision weighing our own needs against those of our families, our friends, our neighbors and society as a whole. We live with an unspoken agreement that we'll balance our desires with those around us. When everything is going according to plan and those basic needs are met, it's easy to coexist as peacefully as the bumper sticker on the Prius in front of you would suggest. 

The question that has long been pondered by philosophers, writers, sociologists and governments is what would it take for that arrangement to collapse into anarchy and chaos. Or to continue the analogy, how thin is the proverbial paper that metaphorical social contract is written on. 

And we're beginning to get our answer. It's 2-ply. 

This is what's happening in Australia for some reason. It seems like fights are breaking out  all across the continent.

Why Australia as opposed to every other country? Why not them? If movies have taught us anything it's that once they're faced with scarcity, they form roving tribes of warlord-led factions, doing battle with each other for the limited resources. We might be used to it being over petroleum and water, but toilet paper wars aren't that far removed. 

And at the risk of coming off as sexist, we really shouldn't be surprised that there seems to be women at the center of all these donnybrooks. That's not misogyny; it's biology. Men like toilet paper. We'd rather have it than not have it. But with females, it's more of a matter of survival. I used to room with three other guys. On more than one occasion, I left the house on a Friday with an empty cardboard tube on the roll, only to come back Sunday night with the same tube still there, unreplaced. Meaning either three grown men went 48 hours without doing a deuce, which is unlikely. Or that someone did swap it out and they used an amount equal to one exact roll, which is virtually impossible. So by Occam's Razor, the simplest and most likely explanation is that they took dumps and just didn't go to the trouble of wiping. 

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All of which was an incentive for me to get married and then move in with a woman. To leave those Cro-Magnons and join civilization. Which I did. In that order, because I'm old fashioned that way. And I was simply not ready for the rate at which one female adult can go through toilet paper. Those rolls were gone seemingly in minutes. It was like a time-lapsed nature film of snow melting to dramatize the changing of the seasons. I used to think she was wrapping presents in the stuff. But it's just nature. 

And so, naturally, it's the ladies who are going at each other's throats in the least lady-like fashion. I don't fully get why, of all the products that would be the one you think you need a six month supply of. As far as I know Covid-19 doesn't create an increased need for the stuff. If we're getting our shitter paper from Wuhan and all the factories are closed, that's news to me. All I know is Toilet Paper War has been declared in the aisles of Australia. I'm worried the panic will spread around the globe. Then it's going to be every woman for herself. 

So please, I implore you. Let cooler heads prevail. Work together, ladies. Cooperate. Have a square to spare.