In 100 years, our descendants will gather around a capsule from the legendary and/or long-forgotten Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020. They will wonder what wisdom we wanted to convey across the generations, what priceless artifacts we chose as vessels of that wisdom. They’ll crack open a dusty seal, lift the lid of the box, and find . . .
Toilet paper.
“We had to have a roll of toilet paper in there,” says Debbie Kling, the mayor of Nampa, Idaho. “Who would have guessed, in 2020, that there would have been a run on toilet paper?”
Fear not, citizens of the pandemic: The Great Toilet Paper Shortage of Mid-March To Early April 2020 will not be lost to history. Rolls are being sealed into time capsules all across America: at Nampa City Hall, at a southeastern Pennsylvania nursing home, at a charter school in Draper, Utah, at a church in North Port, Fla., with the promise that they will not be opened for 25 years to a century.
Other treasures our descendants will dig up include hand sanitizer, face shields and many, many masks. Some capsules have included thermometers and signs telling people to keep six feet apart. Newspapers with notable headlines are popular, too. (“What is a newspaper?” future generations might wonder.) In Nampa, some of the other items Kling has collected include a spit vial that was used to test students at a local university, an empty vaccine vial and a mental health proclamation from the city’s Teen Council about suicide prevention and “reaching out for help if you’re discouraged.” A Charleston, S.C., capsule by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will include a member’s vaccine card. The New York radio station WNYC collected recordings of listeners’ pandemic stories and stashed them at the top of the Empire State Building. For one Loudon County, Tenn., capsule, a couple donated an invitation for their socially distanced, drive-by wedding.
With the end of the pandemic possibly in sight, people are starting to think about how this uniquely crummy time in American history will be understood by our great-(great-great-)grandchildren. The International Time Capsule Society, which maintains a registry for capsules around the world, says there have been thousands created during the pandemic — “An increase of at least tenfold, if not many more,” says society co-founder Adrienne Waterman. “They’re pouring in.”