Coronavirus toilet paper shortage: How growing up in a Communist System prepared me for 2020.

"When I was your age, I walked uphill to school, both ways." How many times have you rolled your eyes at your grandparents saying this at the dinner table? That's the story I can't wait to tell my grandchildren. Only to add, "an hour each way, in the harshest weather conditions, on the side of a two lane highway, AND we didn't have sidewalks." They will roll their eyes and bet I'm exaggerating. I'm not.

As humans, we often wrongly assume that the people that surround us have had the same experiences as us. After all, they look like us, speak our language, are a certain age, have similar socioeconomic status. They must be like us and have had similar lives. We couldn't be further away from the truth. In order to build compassion, they say one must walk a mile in your shoes. In my case, it's a kilometer.

---

As Covid hit the world in January, Americans watched as it spread wildly throughout Europe, and did nothing, believing it would never come for us. After all, we are a first world country. Our confidence was shaken in early March, when we protested over masks, stock piled toilet paper, Lysol wipes, N-95 masks, and argued over social distancing. It was a shock to the system for all, but especially those born in 1st world countries.

It shouldn't come as a surprise, that as March 2020 rolled around, many Eastern Europeans had flashbacks of their lives during the 1980s. It took immigrants 40 years & Covid to look back, find the irony and twisted humor in all of this. We got this. We always had this.

My generation, the 80's kids, grew up without supermarkets, without food, and with gray toilet paper where you could see the pieces of wood if you looked close enough. The government rationed our basic needs, often leaving families with empty tables, stomachs, shoes that didn't fit, and holes in the hand me downs. The population of Wronin, the small farming village near Kraków, is 350 people now, I can't even imagine how tiny the town was 40 years ago. To me, though, it was the whole world.

If kids could make the journey to school, they could also go grocery shopping for the family, right? The one and only "store"in town was in the garage of the neighbor. The space was smaller than a classroom, the capacity was 10 people tops. Social distancing was optimal since it was so cramped, and you couldn't pick your own merchandise, anyways. Instead, customers had to ask the store clerk to assist and "ring them up". Ringing up the customer meant the store clerk would do quick math with a dull pencil on parchment paper to determine the total.

---

The problem wasn't that people didn't have cars, nor that they could only carry so many bags at a time.The problem was that there was absolutely nothing in the stores to buy. The shelves were empty, except for bottles of vinegar. Apple cider vinegar wasn't a weight loss food back then, so it wasn't flying off those shelves. People would see delivery trucks and line up for hours, just to buy whatever was just delivered, even though they had no idea what they were waiting in line for. It could be bread, it could be cloth diapers they could sell on the black market. It didn't matter, if they didn't need it, they could always sell it, everyone had to get by. If you lived on the farm, the saving grace was that you could raise your livestock, have eggs, and milk the cow to feed the kids.

The women in each multigenerational household had no choice but to work together, they made do with whatever they had, not what they wish they had. People came together to help each other survive the tough times. Since we didn't have a phone, my mom traded eggs just so we could travel 30 minutes into the city, use the rich city folk's phone in order to talk to my dad once in a while.

---

As 2020 unraveled before us, we saw people all over the world rediscovering self-reliance, growing their own food, and persevering through the Pandemic. Maybe there is a bright side in all of this. There's a Polish saying, "Umiesz liczyć? Licz na siebie!" ("Can you count? Count on yourself!") It seems very fitting in the times of Covid-19, but wouldn't it be more comforting to know that you can count on everyone else in your tribe as well?