Note to all TP hoarders: Don’t make me go all Cabbage Patch on You
With the Virus-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named reaching an all-time high panic note with adults hoarding and reselling toilet paper and off-brand hand sanitizer while enthusiastically elbowing each other in the face to get that last can of Lysol spray, I can’t help but miss the days of my youth. Currently those of us who live for social interaction are slowly wilting like the wallflowers we were never meant to be and left squeezing our Charmin in order to find some comfort in this trying time for our nation. The last time my tired eyes witnessed this lack of humane humanity I was quite small but can still accurately recall when this level of retail consumerism was plaguing the nation, one Toys-R-Us at a time.
That’s right. The Cabbage Patch Kids Explosion of the 1980s. There were no survivors.
For months, the adults of this world rushed to local toy stores and piled up like zombies in a yet-to-be-made Brad Pitt movie and buckled the one way doors of many a not-ready retailer.
People were stampeded to death (don’t fact check this) and many lives were forever lost (or this) as day jobs were left behind to join the Fight Club of the Cabbage Patch Sucker Punches. And what was the grand prize? A 17-inch doll with a permanently surprised, non-moving face, a soft dimpled body, and a tattoo of honor on their little doll-trafficking bottoms penned by their sugar daddy, Xavier Roberts.
If you happened to be living under a rock or a cabbage leaf these past several decades and do not remember the Cabbage Patch Explosion then I shall fill you in. The dolls came in oversized boxes with plastic windows on the front. Instead of “buying” a doll, one, instead, adopted the cherub within. Each CPK came with its own birth certificate with his or her full name spelled out and a carefully chosen birthdate. Most Kids were born on the first or last of the month so, to this day, if I meet someone who happened to open or close a month with their premiere date I like to shriek – “You’re a Cabbage Patch Kid!” and then watch in glee as they stare at me blankly until I’m forced to explain my exclamation in excruciating detail which they LOVE.
Ahem.
According to the backstory, Xavier Roberts followed a magical bee-bunny hybrid through a waterfall and came upon a cabbage patch where the babies were being born. He swore to help them all find homes of their own because “everybody should have a family to love!” So let’s all learn a lesson from Mr. Roberts and check on your friends and neighbors during this difficult time. We are all uncertain. We are all alone. And we are all in need of that one kind person to message us and say: “Do you have toilet paper? Bread? Milk? I have a little extra I can share!” and then leave it on the doorstep, wrapped in a blanket, and with a note that reads: “No one was trampled to death in the obtaining of this product probably.”