UNDER COVID, PT. 22: A TUNA SANDWICH, A CAN OF BEER -- AND HOW!

One of these things is not like the other.

We made a break for it on Mother's Day, my wife and I did. Taking advantage of the sudden, pleasant turn in the weather -- we had snow flurries only two nights earlier -- Sue decided it was time, during lockdown, to do something different. Something that "in these uncertain times" (how sick I am of that phrase) would be frowned upon, or even shocking. Perhaps life-threatening.

And so we walked to Central Park, somewhere north of 96th Street, spread out a sheet, and had a picnic. 

A picnic. In Central Park. In a sunny spring afternoon. That, fellow humans, is what these days is unusual in New York, the (declining) hotspot of COVID-19. 

Don't tell us we don't know how to have a
good time.

We weren't the only ones out that day, almost all of us masked up like a group of doctors on a field trip. And we didn't exactly have the area to ourselves, although there were only a handful of us, far apart as if (if?) our lives depended on it. 

When you haven't done something normal in a long time, it can seem -- well, not exactly abnormal, but quite strange. And it wasn't like your usual first picnic of the year, when you wait for winter to finally end. We had to wait for life to start. Kind of start, anyway.

The signs are there. Flowers budding, trees blooming. A few more people on the street. If you been walking on the bridle path with us, you wouldn't have noticed anything out of the ordinary. Oh, except for the masks, and strangers avoiding each other, and friends talking six feet apart. But there were more of them than before.

The unspoken feeling here is no longer My God, when is this going to end? It's more like, Isn't it nice to be alive so we can see the end of this thing? It's going to end, isn't it?

Central Park, the way I like it.

As Sue took a post-nap lunch, I strolled around the area, marveling at the bits of nature I had hitherto been aware of but not really seen. And as I looked to the blue sky, I  became aware of an unusual feeling -- something, I realized, that had been there since we sat on the blanket.

A cool breeze was blowing on my face. My entire face. It was the first time in close to two months that I had been outside with my face totally uncovered. For two hours. 

Good thing, bub, because you're not going anywhere
for a few more weeks.

That's not something I'm taking for granted. Because while parts of upstate New York will graaaaaaaaaaaaadually open starting May 15, the city won't begin its resurrection before June 6. And even then, it's likely to be a very slow process.

While perhaps masks might not be mandatory after the sixth, they'll likely be encouraged, to put it mildly. Restaurants and bars re-opening? Probably not so soon. Movie and Broadway theaters? Don't put money on it. Schools? Too late.

So what parts of New York City that make New York City New York City are going to open? That's up to Gov. Cuomo, the man who, according to a recent national poll, scored well from 77% of Democrats and 53% of Republicans, and who in a local poll gets 87% positives. The man who now is driving women into unashamed throes of ecstasy.  Looks like he made the right decision when, months pre-COVID, he broke up with his longtime girlfriend and "TV personality" Sandra Lee. (A "TV personality" is someone you never heard of until the beginning or end of a relationship.)

Andrew Cuomo has an opinion? I'm shocked.

It's Cuomo's press briefings, carried live from here to Saturn, that have made him the sexiest man alive. No other politician commands the stage as well as Cuomo. He's got the facts at hand, he's strong yet calm, clearly intelligent and well-spoken. 

As I quoted in an earlier piece, the great character actor Lionel Atwill appeared to have been on to something when he said, "Women kiss the hand that rules them." Go to any female-centric site: women are positively slobbering over Andrew Cuomo in a way that recalls Bill Clinton during his glory days -- only without the well known sexual baggage that a previous generation of their sisters (or, rather, mothers) blithely ignored. 

"The name is Cuomo. Andrew Cuomo. Not my meathead
brother Chris. I'm not even sure we're really related or not."

Leader. Steady. Sexy. These are things that make Gov. Cuomo. Which makes it all the more remarkable that, until the pandemic hit New York, the words used most in conjunction with Andrew Cuomo were "scandal", "corruption" and "angry." 

Now women want to bear his children. I can't think of another politician who's had such an astonishing 180-degree positive turnaround. No wonder why, despite his protestations, there's still a Cuomo-for-President movement brewing.

Perhaps he remembers the last popular New York politician who thought his tragedy-related sky-high poll numbers would carry him into the White House. Say, has anybody seen Rudy Giuliani lately? Maybe he's quarantining somewhere in Ukraine.

                                                    ************************