Shopping the Apocalypse

We narrowly averted a personal-products crisis in the Holt household earlier this week, when I mistook paper towels for toilet paper.  I have no idea what compelled Mark to buy an 8-pack of paper towels in the first place.  That he stored them where the toilet paper usually goes?  Well, now you're just talking crazy!

I don't believe I have bought 8 rolls of paper towels in my entire life of buying things.  I don't use them.  In fact, I'm always caught a bit off guard when I'm in a friend's kitchen and spy one of those wooden paper-towel holders on the counter  It's as though I've spotted some exotic butterfly I'd only seen in books. My God!   I think to myself, These people use paper towels!

So, given their bulk and odd location, a girl can be forgiven for assuming they were something else, right? 

I sent Mark back to the store yesterday to rectify his earlier mistake.  He came back with a 12-pack of Scott Single-Ply industrial toilet paper.  (I can practically hear some of your lips sneering in derision, you persnickety, two-ply snobs, you). Twelve double rolls of toilet paper for a two-person household.  The audacity!  As though Mark is just tempting the future to quit coming.

I'm nuts about Mark, but his apocalyptic-buying tendencies befuddle me.  It's as though he's finally hitched up the horses and is leaving the soddie for his quarterly trip into town for supplies.  I wave from the porch, hoping neither blizzard nor rattler will take him down before he makes it back home again with his 12-packs of soap, his industrial-sized detergent, his 8 rolls of paper towels.

He says seeing such bulk brings him some measure of comfort. I guess I can sort of see what he's saying. It's the same tenuous argument I occasionally make in defense of purchasing insurance.  It's just good to know we have it, in case we ever need it.  

For now, the Holt household is back in order, all things in their proper place.  And we face our future with the confidence that can only come from an abundance of single-ply prosperity, knowing we have what it takes to survive, until pa once again loads up the cart and heads into town.