EAVESDROPPER'S REPORT FROM NEW YORK CITY, AS IMAGINED BY A FORMER RESIDENT OF BOSTON NOW LIVING IN AUSTIN, TEXAS

--"Whenever I wait for a subway car, I am invariably attempting to decide whether the individual 10 yards away from me at the subway station is a Psychopath or a Sociopath. This is one of those criminology distinctions that all of us face at 6 a.m. in the morning here. According to the guidebook on criminology from Time-Life that I recently purchased, the Psychopath has no sense of right or wrong, while the Sociopath has a sense of right or wrong, but is capable of pursuing immoral conduct without any sense of restraint. I get so confused about whether the subject I am gazing at is the latter or the former, that I often flip a coin at the subway station in order to get the right answer. Heads tells me they're a Psychopath; tails tells me they're a Sociopath."

---"One of my hobbies is to tape-record for posterity each of the chiming clock towers we have in New York. During my leisuretime I walk all over town, adding to my audio recordings collection that I feel confident a  historian of our city will someday be very grateful for."

---"If you asked me where the nearest bowling alley is here in Manhattan, I would be completely stumped. I would have to Google that one, and even then I wouldn't believe the answer I get until I actually locate that bowling alley with my own eyes. I don't bowl, so it puts me at a disadvantage on that subject."

---"I think it's perfectly fair for you to list 'Unpaid Tourism Guide' on your resume, since you get dozens of questions from visiting tourists every week. My only suggestion would be that you change that to 'Volunteer Tourism Guide', to give the impression that you do it out of love for humanity, since all of your impulses as a New Yorker are eternally philanthropic on a 24-hour-a-day basis."

---"Besides which, it makes good business sense to answer questions when tourists pose them to you. New York urgently needs as many tourism dollars as we can get, and you as a New Yorker benefit financially through the trickle-down effect on your own pocketbook whenever dollars are spent here by tourists."

---"Am I the only one who discovers at least once per week that when I'm gazing out of my apartment bedroom window, I see some guy gazing back at me through binoculars from a window in the apartment building facing my unit? It is one of the most unnerving things that ever happens to me here, so much so that I always get this creepy feeling that I'm being stalked. My first impulse is to dial 911 and beg NYPD to investigate, but then I sense the dispatcher will just laugh at me and ask me why I refer to a pair of binoculars as if it were a lethal weapon. Then the dispatcher would tell me that unless I can prove that there is a gun attached to those binoculars, my complaint is not pertinent for NYPD. The dispatcher might even add that I should be very grateful that anyone in this city finds me interesting enough to gaze at me through binoculars. 'At least you're not getting ignored in our city,' the dispatcher might then have the audacity and callousness to snap at me before hanging up his end of the phone line."

to be continued