It's Come to This by Laura Pedersen

Author:Laura Pedersen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Laura Pedersen
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

When a stupid government is elected in a democratic country, the best thing about this is that you learn the number of stupid people in that country!

—MEHMET MURAT İLDAN

Chapter 19

The Knucklehead Dilemma

New York City entered “Phase Four” of the reopening process, only without opening indoor dining or enclosed gathering spaces such as museums, theaters, and malls. Bars serving booze out front had created a clever work-around to the requirement that food had to be purchased along with alcohol, and were selling Cuomo Chips with salsa for one dollar. Covid speakeasies had popped up around the city, away from the prying eyes of law enforcement. Add to that we were in our second week of the heat index cracking one hundred. This led to overcrowding and over-reveling, and Gov Dad was really mad, once again. He’d received another secret stash of photos showing rulebreakers in Astoria. Being a Queens native, Cuomo took them to task in their own accent: “Knock it off, don’t be stupid.” Guv Dad threatened to shut it all right back down. Then he tried some common sense: “Even if you’re in your twenties you can get sick. And you can make other people sick.” For good measure he tacked on a Dad catchphrase, “You’re not a super-hero, but you could become a super-spreader.” Just so you didn’t mistake that for a joke, or think Guv Dad wasn’t taking names, he suspended the liquor license of four bars and restaurants—three in Queens and one on Long Island. This was in addition to the 410 charges against establishments for violating executive orders and twenty-seven previously suspended licenses.

Guv Dad wasn’t finished after straightening out the kids. Crazy Uncle Donald threatened to send federal troops to New York to deal with protesters aka “anarchists who hate our country” (who is the “our” in that sentence?) like he’d done in Portland (which resulted in much more violence). Guv Dad told Crazy Uncle Donald to check his medication and take another cognitive test, and we all knew that meant if Guv Dad saw so much as one person in camouflage on lower Broadway, Crazy Uncle Donald would wake up with a horse head in his White House bed (on top of the cheeseburger wrappers and Diet Coke cans).

California overtook New York State for the total number of coronavirus cases on July 23, 2020, which finally ended our number one Hot Zone status. And at the rate Texas and Florida were going, they’d soon surpass our number two slot when it came to the highest Covid caseload in the country. Lo and behold, Trump abruptly caved into the reality of the disease and cancelled the portion of the Republican Party Convention scheduled to take place in Jacksonville, Florida.

Guv Dad, not wanting to regain our leading virus status, penned a “Dear Kids” letter that began, “I have a message for young people: This is not the time to fight for your right to party,” and ended with, “If you treat COVID lightly, you may not live to regret it.

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