It is a serious situation these days and I'm sure we are all taking the necessary steps to ensure our families and ourselves are reacting in a calm and non-panicky fashion to the world around us. What I have noticed via the internet and Facebook is an increase in memes addressing the current condition and the need to try to make light of it. I guess we are a cynical race after all.

What I want to relate is my latest shopping trip to top up my fridge and dry goods (no, I already have for years maintained a decent backlog of essentials in case of need and am not in a panic mood.) Being a people watcher I spent a fair amount of time just trying to be invisible while watching a great deal of toilet paper and beer being loaded and bought. I never looked at those items as a super survival commodity. What really caught my eye is one fellow's concept of an absolute survival item. He had a large grocery cart filled to overbrimming (and the underside stuffed full also), of every bag of potato chips he could cram into the cart. What's the old saw, "To each his own (concept of necessity.)