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I'm still befuddled as to why Americans thought they needed to hoard toilet paper early on in the coronavirus crisis. Did they fear toilet paper manufacturers would suddenly stop producing and shipping it?

This week, as I walked to the pharmacy - conveniently located next door to a gun store - I saw people lined up around the block. As I got closer, I saw the line wasn't for the pharmacy (they were out of toilet paper, anyway) but for the gun shop. I jokingly asked one man, "Are you purchasing a gun to protect your toilet paper stash?" He smiled, but the guy in front of him nodded his head.

In the news recently, I saw a report about a man bashing in the window of a parked vehicle to steal a 24-pack of Charmin Ultra Strength from the back seat of the car. Who does that?

I drove home and logged into Amazon. Up popped, in living color, a plethora of fluffy, soft, squeezable toilet paper packages in every brand you could ever want. You could TP a house with it. But when I hit the "buy now" button, I noticed that the delivery date (and hey, I'm an Amazon PRIME member, mind you) would be between April 30 and May 21. I can't wait that long to go.

Over the millennia, human beings have lived without TP. Native Americans used leaves and twigs, wartime Europe used newspaper or bidets, Japanese households used wet cloths and still do. They think it's gross that most of the West uses dry paper.

I lived in Vietnam for 2 years beginning in 2008, and in my book, So Happiness to Meet You: Foolishly Blissfully Stranded in Vietnam, I relate a story my young Vietnamese neighbor told me. He said that until the 1990s there was no toilet paper in most homes. People used their hands and then simply washed them afterward. Once, when he had to change his baby sister's poopy diaper, he was too disgusted to use his own fingers, so he placed her on the floor and wiped her butt with his big toe.

While you are quarantined or social-distancing yourself in your home, waiting for the crisis to pass, you might Google the history of toilet paper. It's really interesting. The earliest mention of it is in 589 AD in Korea. The first official paper was produced, naturally, in China in 1391. The first commercially available TP was invented by Joseph Gayetty in 1857 to the applause and eternal thanks of the American people.

So if the country mysteriously runs out of toilet paper, what are the alternatives? Paper towels, table napkins, sponges, rags and so on. This is America, people. We'll figure it out. This is the least of our worries right now.

- Karin Esterhammer

Karin Esterhammer is the author of the hilarious memoir So Happiness to Meet You, Foolishly, Blissfully Stranded in Vietnam. She's written for numerous publications, including the Los Angeles Times.