Will the generation following Greta Thunberg ask her why she didn't address some as yet unknown existential menace, while she was busy campaigning for government action against climate change?

OPINION: These are troubled times, when even toilet paper can cause problems. How much is socially acceptable to buy; can it be safely ushered to the car; where should it be hidden so burglars or guests don't swipe it? Even using it can create buttock-clenching anxiety.

Undoubtedly, these are the Bad New Days, filled with rectal disquiet and worse.

Or are they? While concealing treasured tissue in 124 unspecified locations around the house, there was time to wonder just when the fabled Good Old Days were.

STUFF Supermarkets around NZ running low in loo paper as people stock up, fearing an outbreak of Covid-19 here. At the time of writing, only 5 people had tested positive for the disease.

Given family memories encompass those passed down from the 1800s, to those of the 2000s, surely a perfect pinpointing can be made, even from 2020?

Sadly, I was able to dig up only Crap Old Days, Pretty Average Old Days and Adequate Old Days.

NLA Australian children in Great Depression, when food and basic necessities were scarce across the world.

Yes, it was a shock to discover other eras had problems as significant as climate change, terrorism, illness, and a malfunctioning All Black backline.

Right away, great-grandparents on both sides can be ruled out as skipping hand-in-hand through golden fields in bright sunshine. Not when a son (aged 20) was slaughtered in the Somme in 1917, on the World War I frontlines. Not when a daughter was committed after a breakdown.

SUPPLIED Taika Waititi as Adolf Hitler in his Oscar-winning film, Jojo Rabbit. Hitler and his Axis alliance 'vacuum cleaned up a decade or so of good days in the 1930s and 1940s'.

Grandad missed the Great War, yet still came up short. A farmer through the 1930s Depression, he had it better than most, but better doesn't equate to "good". He cut candles for his workers to a tiny sliver, so they wouldn't get tired reading all night, and to save money.

Adolf Hitler and the Axis alliance vacuum cleaned up a decade or so of good days in the 1930s and 1940s. While New Zealand was not smashed like Europe, Mum spent her school years fearing a Japanese invasion, her anxiety increased by bomb drills, blackouts, and rationed food.

GETTY IMAGES During the Cold War, which lasted from the end of WWII until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, large swathes of the world lived under constant threat of a superpower nuclear confrontation.

Dad went to World War II, saw friends killed, and never got over it. For decades his chat was shaped by war, and littered with Egyptian and Italian phrases. A caring man, he referred to Mum as the "missus", the "squaw" or the "cook". She has no nostalgia for that hurtful era, in which a daughter died of medical misadventure.

Britons asked to define the "Good Old Days", largely opted for the 1960s, with its surge of British pop music and fashion, the loosening of sexual restraints, and the gradually fading horror of that second world war.

JFK HYANNIS MUSEUM John, Robert and Edward Kennedy. JFK's assassination sparked global grief at a time of huge geopolitical instability.

And yet, and yet… there was an ominous Cold War threat. The Russians were coming, nuclear warheads were being stockpiled, and could hit any target, we were told. JFK was assassinated, and the Cubans were big trouble. Bullying was rife, and the cane a constant menace.

Anxiety about the future of the world is passed down the generations. Now it's about whether the planet will be inhabitable in a decade or so, with the finger of blame being pointed.

Carsten Koall/Getty Images Things might feel grim at the moment, but during the Cold War, countries such as Germany were bitterly, even literally, divided.

OK, Boomer. It's the fault of my lot, and those before. I've used a lot of plastic bags, so now our children, dolphins and sea turtles are paying for it. At least we Boomers helped end apartheid and the Vietnam War, I guess. C-.

Before us, Dad was busy trying not to get killed, or mourning his mates that did. Grandparents were obsessed with trying to survive the Depression. No generation has it easy.

Soon, there will be a new wave, telling their parents something like: "Greta, what the hell were you doing in 2020 – why didn't you do anything about [some hitherto unforeseen threat]?"

All we can do is use the days as best we can, so all days are – on average – better. If I could choose one time in the last 120 years to be alive, it would be now.

Toilet paper crisis aside.