Column: What’s most important right now?

I am a coach, so competition is always running through my mind even during these difficult times. I started to think of the items that are the most necessary while I am hunkered down at home. I started playing a game.

I thought of all the essentials. I started with hand sanitizers, books, paper towels and TV News updates.

Then kept at it: going for a walk, Netflix and Amazon Prime, alcoholic beverages, chicken breasts (man are they hard to find these days), sleep and rest, toilet paper, house cleaning, family discussions, the computer, board games and even mental toughness and resilience.

That was my “sweet sixteen.” But I wanted to know which is number one? What is most vital?

After some intense deliberations and difficult eliminations I cut the list in half. What survived were news updates, Netflix/Amazon Prime, books, toilet paper, hand sanitizers, going for a walk and mental toughness and resilience.

I still wanted to narrow it down to just one.

After an extremely painful back and forth, the final four: hand sanitizers, news updates, toilet paper and mental toughness remained. I felt bad about losing my books and especially “going for a walk,” but something had to give.

Still, to get down to one wasn’t easy. In the end, sorry news updates, I will miss you (maybe), and sorry hand sanitizer, you were so hard to find and now I have lost you again.

But I brought it down to the final two: mental toughness aka resilience or toilet paper. The logic, the sentiment, the morality play here would be for mental toughness. Good-ness knows in the coming weeks we will need this.

But I couldn’t stop the momentum of toilet paper. The sheer practicality of it all. It’s gaining popularity. It was a close and intense battle, but bottom line? Toilet paper wiped out the competition.

Some two months ago toilet paper was a mere afterthought. An easy to get resource that we all took for granted. How times have changed. The previously disregarded TP stood out as champion. The king of essential home items. Standing atop the world and looking down on all of us who may have looked down on it.

Lesson learned, TP, and no hard feelings. Won’t ever take you for granted again.

John Cohn is a New Eastside resident.

Image:by pngtree.com.