Guardian of the sacred rolls

I've learned a number of things since the rise of the pandemic:

• What not to flush down the toilet.
• That liquor stores are considered "essential services" but public libraries are not.
• How many times I touch my face.
• How little experience even professional broadcasters have in using home video cameras and how to set them up so as not to look like Frankenstein's monster.
• How much I take the ability to travel, go to movies, and eat at restaurants for granted.
• That my mother has hoarded toilet paper since experiencing shortages as a child during WWII.
• How to stream the local news on my computer.
• How frustrating parents having their children at home can be.
• That spring can never come soon enough

But the thing that probably amazes me the most is just how much humor toilet paper can invoke. Every day for what seems like the last month, I've seen or heard at least two new toilet paper jokes a day.

Just this morning I was named "Guardian of the Sacred Rolls' by fellow volunteers who were shopping and packing groceries for delivery to home-bound folks. The Cub grocery store which has long collaborated with the Help At Your Door non-profit had set aside a couple dozen 12-packs of toilet paper knowing it would be on many a list and in short supply. Both the volunteers and the staff of Cubs were concerned that if regular shoppers saw this treasure-load, they may become, uh, irrational. So I was appointed the protector of all things tissue. Happily, I did not have to use force in order secure our customers' double ply since my ju jitsu skills are rather rusty. 

I don't believe I have a particularly scatologically-bent set of friends and family. Of all of my social network, I probably enjoy a good fart joke more than any of them. I generally associate humor regarding bodily functions as peaking at around age four. (My children and grandchildren found it less and less amusing to pull my finger as they grew older.) And it seems I am somewhat accurate in my observations. In "Why children find 'poo' so hilarious - and how adults should tackle it" The Conversation, 2/2/17, Justin Williams writes: 

 ...children find things funny when they are stretching their cognitive abilities. Incongruity is a key quality of amusement and that has to be pitched at the right level and in the right context for the recipient to be tickled. Evidence shows that once the cognitive level has been passed, the subject loses its potency.

The other key quality is the social tension that gives rise to humour... Humour can thereby be understood as a critical aspect of social play. As well as its role in social bonding, play is something that we all must do in order to practise a range of skills, which will be required for survival and reproductive success. 

So has the pandemic caused a little regression in all of us because we are stretching our cognitive abilities and practicing new skills? Or do we still just like a good laugh about something that we subconsciously know is naughty? 

I'll sign off with one...