A.  Sheltering in place, weary from hours of online grading and a spouse making loud sounds in the house again, you change into running shorts and matching headband in search of mid-day, phantasmagoric adventure.  You could run the shadeless neighborhood blindfolded, so instead, hatch a plan to drive to your favorite leafy park, recently reopened under your state’s aggressive reopening guidelines.

     Water bottle, check; towel, check.  Not getting any younger, the virus has you uneasy.  A mask for the run?  You believe the President’s vanity keeps him from wearing a mask, even at an Arizona mask factory or Ford ventilator plant, blowhard goes nose-free.  Not you.  If you toss a mask into the car, go to B.  On the other hand, you’re so vain.  Sure, you wear a mask hefting your eggplant around the produce aisle, but no sooner clear of the last bagger, you drop your mask like your spouse drops the (now daily) five o’clock jug of sangria.  If the mask stays behind, go to C.

B.  Really?  Why are you even here?  You will never wear a mask in the great outdoors.  Ever.  Not in town.  Not in NYC.  Not even Wuhan.  Under martial law.  Enough pretending poster child for toxic mask-ulinity.  Proceed to C.

C.  You can enter through the main gate and park near the outdoor exercise area, a popular stopover for fit parents to stash strollers near the playground.  Or you can drive past the gate and park on the street, a short walk to the small pond just inside the park, a gathering place for filthy geese, fishers, and portal to a parallel universe.  Rumored portal, that is.  You are undecided: it’s mostly the surface scum and no swimming sign, but also a fear of bottomless depths and toothy abyssal creatures that keep you from a curious, impulsive plunge.  Of the geese, you’ve no doubt.

     Known virus carriers, you’ve tiptoed through their deviously plotted cigarello garden of e. coli, been further harassed by their aggressive, grass-chewing swagger, their honky, bacteria-laden sneezes.  Sour odors could have you longing for that mask.  If geese microbes scare you, enter through the main gate, go to D.  If it’s toddling, pre-K immu-ninos and immu-ninas and their buff, virus-shedding mommies you fear, park on the street, go to E.

D.  You live in the burbs of a large southern city where confederates, conspiracy theorists, Pelosi fans, Kemp lovers, and phantasm-seeking joggers come together, united in their belief, in their goddam right to co-mingle peacefully in their favorite park, eager to express, or escape, their politics with a fresh air stroll.

     Inside the main gate, the parking lot near the outdoor fly machine, sit-up station, and pull-up bar is jam packed, cars queued, waiting for a spot to open like it was Yellowstone’s Grand Prismatic Spring in July.  Inching along, you see the distant playground overrun with mucousy, raucous, immune tykes, while nearby, a young woman in a black tankini ties off her double stroller, jumps up to the pull-up bar, your pull-up bar, and after 12 reps, exhausted, you stop counting.  Next up, her shirtless husband.  Then, their trainer.  Not a single young Republican wipes down the bar.  And how would you know that?  Because nobody had a towel!  Come on!  Peel out to E.

For E to Z, CLICK HERE