AN APRIL 2020 IMAGINARY EAVESDROPPER'S REPORT FROM NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

---"I am dreading the day when I enter a bookstore and the first thing I see is a book entitled, 'COVID-19 Humor Anthology, from New York's Finest Comedians'".

--"The only way I could even consider buying a book like that is if I knew for sure that 50 percent of the net profits from that book would go toward a COVID-19 Victims relief fund."

--"Your social conscience is terrific. I wish we had more New Yorkers like you. Maybe you should pursue a career for a non-profit group that actually pays well."

---"That's a great idea. I should do some research to find out which social-service agencies here pay their employees the best salaries. I cannot afford to make the switch from for-profit to non-profit employer unless I can be sure I'll make rent every month."

---"Every time I enter a bank here and see everyone wearing masks, I get this creepy feeling that I'll be witnessing a robbery. If that happens, I'd be legally obligated to volunteer as a witness, and this means I'll spend hundreds of hours in a courtroom all because I was there at the time. I will be so relieved when the COVID-19 crisis is over. I won't worry about having to turn into witness for the prosecution merely because I entered a bank.''

--"This is probably the ONLY event we've had in New York when cracking a joke about it is completely unthinkable to 99 percent of our residents. I agree with those who say that it should be a crime to joke about COVID-19."

--"At least with COVID-19 you quickly learn who your friends aren't. Your friends aren't the ones who fail to call you when you're confined inside your home all day."

--"I hate the fact that COVID-19 has forced me to admit that I have only two friends in New York these days. This means I'll have to work hard after this is over to make friends with a third person. So when the next pandemic hits here, I'll at least have a third person calling me, which would make it much more interesting inside my apartment unit."

---"I can never understand why anyone in this city would ever buy hand soap that fails to offer anti-bacterial protection. Any idiot should be able to see that many of the hand soaps being sold here don't even protect you from bacterial infection."

--"Maybe they should rewrite those famous words from the Green Goddess of Liberty, or am I getting her mixed up with the name of a salad dressing brand? Anyway, my thought is that our Statue of Liberty message should be revised to say, 'Give Us your Tired, Your Poor, and Your Disease-afflicted', to make it clear that this is the place to go if you have something potentially fatal to infect everyone else with. Or would that be too verbose?"

--"The only consolation I can see from COVID-19 is that it gives me plenty of spare time to figure out which type of book I want to write, if I ever do get around to a creative literary project. Sitting inside my home all day makes me eager to turn into a published author."

--"I recommend that you start with your book title. If you have a book title you like, writing the rest of it will come easy for you. That's the strategy I always use when I'm trying to find the desire to sit down and write a book. I have been published, you know, the people at Doubleday are very familiar with me."

--"Here I thought you were the ONLY friend of mine who never namedrops. But you just bragged about having connections with editors at DoubleDay. I guess we're all out of character during this COVID-19 crisis, so I won't fault you for name-dropping. Everyone is feeling a bit desperate right now."

--"This is one crisis here in New York where I actually get angry and alienated if I see someone who looks happy and cheerful and calm. That tells me they are being complacent, which is very frightening to me."

--"Think of all the tip payment money you aren't handing out, as you would have if you'd been dining in your favorite restaurants. But then I start to realize that I don't know how to prepare inside my home many of the dishes I like the best when I dine out at Four Seasons. Plus, some of my favorite waiters may be feeling a bit of a financial pinch these days. I would gladly tip them, but I just don't run into them anymore. And besides, if I did run into them at the supermarket and I handed them a tip, NYPD might charge me with attempted prostitution."

---"I need to buy a special air-purifier for inside my home during this crisis. I read that persons exposed to air pollution are more likely to get killed by COVID-19. Since we can't change the smog outside, we can at least spend money to make the interior of our condo unit as pure in air quality as possible."

--"My theory is that New Yorkers who are drug addicts are twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as the ones who aren't drug addicts.  Is that your impression, too?"

---"That's exactly what I was thinking. But I don't have any stats I can cite, so this is just my opinion. Fortunately for me, I haven't smoked a reefer in more than 30 years."

---"I like the way the COVID-19 crisis makes it safe to profile everyone in New York as a possible suspect. Being prejudiced during this crisis is perfectly safe, since I have a very tangible reason for keeping all the distance I can from anyone I don't trust. But of course, that's the whole point during this period. I can't trust anyone. Everyone is a possible suspect these days."

---"I wish there were some type of immunity-system-enhancement booster shot I could get from my doctor during this crisis. I am not sure whether eating lots of broccoli is going to be enough to protect my immunity system adequately."

---"It's odd how whenever I watch a Hollywood movie on my television set during this period, I get upset if I ever see an actor standing closer than six feet from another actor. That violates the COVID-19 rules, I want to shout at them. But then I come to my senses and take into account that they did their movie production BEFORE the COVID-19 crisis. You can't fault them for showing pre-COVID lifestyle conduct. No one has that kind of foresight that they would insist on six feet of distance at all times in their acting roles they did back in 2018 or early 2019."

---"Can you imagine being a clergyman these days and testing positive, then finding out that you had infected a member of your congregation with the virus? A clergyman who did that might spend a lot of time worrying about whether the sin he committed was a sin of commission or a sin of omission, and whether it might put him in Hell in his afterlife."

---"This is one advantage to rabbis, they don't worry about going to hell since they don't believe in an afterlife. From a legal liability standpoint, though, I can see where a rabbi might worry that a member of his synagogue might sue the rabbi in a court of law if that member found out that he'd been infected by his rabbi."

--"A good defense attorney could point out to the jury that it could have been someone else, such as a complete stranger waiting for a subway, who caused the infection. I find it hard to believe that the synagogue member who sues his rabbi in that context would get any money out of it."'

---"I wonder who's going to do the documentary about our city's COVID-19 crisis, and whether they will win best documentary film award at the Academy Awards ceremony. This is the way you have to think to always be competitive here in New York. You have to think of ways to turn a tragedy into a great creative accomplishment you earn lots of money from.'

---"I am spending so much time inside my home that my cell phone is never at risk of running out of steam. I keep it fully charged at all times inside my home. Maybe I should write a book of Consolations from being a Covid-19 Crisis New Yorker."

---"Another consolation you could mention in your book project that might turn into a best-seller is that the COVID crisis gives you an opportunity to devote more thought to your interior decor. Frankly, there is nothing like spending all day and all night inside your home to see more clearly some of the interior design mistakes you made, and why you need to change the color or design to make things more cheerful the next time you are confined to your home during a crisis."

--"At least I'm not developing any romantic crushes during this period. Anyone I see on the subway, I can't tell since I never see their mouth or teeth anymore because of the face mask they're wearing. The mouth and teeth are more important than you'd think to tell whether you might fall in love with them."

--"I worry that this crisis will be so severe that thousands of prospective future nurses and prospective future doctors will decide to pursue a career away from our city's hospitals. So the caliber of the staff in our city's hospitals will decline dramatically as soon as this crisis is over, since no one wants to do a repeat performance on something this severe. I can't say that I can blame the nurses and doctors who are wanting to relocate to private-practice clinics and preferably in a city where the COVID-19 rate was as close to zero as possible."

--"I am completely bored with board games these days, but that's all my children want to do with me is play board games inside our home. We don't have the option of playing tennis together outdoors or indoors at our family's athletic club. I think they should spell BOARD GAMES AS 'B-O-R-E-D' GAMES, SINCE THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE! You do them only if you are completely bored out of your mind, and you always complete a board game MORE BORED THAN BEFORE YOU STARTED!"

--"Covid-19 always reminds me of the movie 'Fatal Attraction'. Any guy I happen to see in public I immediately imagine as someone who MIGHT have a fatal virus in his body, if I get any closer. So this makes every bachelor I run into here a prospective 'Homme Fatale', which is very grim and certainly destroys my ability to imagine them as a dating partner for me."


--"What I hate the most about COVID-19 is that it exposes my weaknesses as a homemaker. I still don't own an onion-cutter, since I always assumed that I would be eating all my onions when I'm dining out at lunchtime. I love to order onions as a way of proving to the men at my workplace that I'm not desperate for a date. They know I've got onion-breath when I return to the workplace precisely because I am NOT trying to impress the single men at my workplace. COVID-19 also exposes all of my non-job-related weaknesses, since I can't exactly review my career resume to boost my morale right now. I'm just another laid-off New Yorker, so my current status is I'm a COVID-19 unemployable, so to speak. Not that I could qualify for disability, and besides, that would be very degrading if I actually did get certified as disabled. Who wants to walk around like their primary trait is that they have been injured for life?"

---"I'm trying to avoid going crazy from COVID-19. If someone tries to break into my apartment, the first thing I'd do is hand him a mask and tell him he can take anything he wants as long as he gives me six feet of distance at all times and is wearing the mask throughout his home-invasion crime. This is how deranged our mindsets get these days. We don't want to get into any physical fight with anyone, so we try to make a deal with the intruder in order to avoid getting infected by them."

---"I need to call my friend who makes lots of money from designing T-shirts here. I need to ask him if he will design a 'I Survived COVID-19' T-shirt for me that I can wear around town as soon as the crisis is over. I'm sure it will thrill him to hear that idea for making a buck out of this crisis."

---"As soon as this crisis is over, I'm sure that all the people I know who work in funeral homes will be going on fancy vacations to places like Hawaii. Just think of all the money those funeral-business people have garnered during this period!"

--"I wonder if any of the funeral businesses in town are listed on the Stock Exchange. If so, it would of course make good business sense for me to invest in those businesses. This sounds grim, but it's just another example of how we New Yorkers are very shrewd investors."

---"The COVID-19 crisis makes me want to study all the famous people who handled crises well. I think of Winston Churchill, so maybe I should listen to tape recordings of his most famous speeches during this period. Anyone who was the most fearless in the face of adversity is the person I'd like to listen to and watch on my television these days."

----"I'm way behind on writing Get Well Cards during this period. I did manage to send one to Tom Hanks and his wife, but I completely failed to send get-well cards to the British Prime Minister and the President of Harvard University and his wife. I'm very good about sending get-well cards, but I've been so obsessed with survivalism in my own life that I haven't found enough time to send a kind note that might boost someone else's morale. Not that I've met the Prime Minister, and I haven't visited the Harvard campus in decades. Maybe what I need to do is find an online website that keeps me fully up-to-date on all the prominent persons I admire who most recently tested positive. This would keep me focused on writing at least one get-well card per week to each of them."

---"Maybe they should design a specially designed comfortable 'space suit' for each of our Presidential candidates that enables them to interact with the general public while completely protecting them against any risk of getting any release of moisture from anyone else's mouth on their own body. If either or both of the two candidates tests positive, this would be a major crisis for our political system this election year, since both of them are older than 65."

---"I need to get better recipes for broccoli during this period. I am trying to eat broccoli every day as one way of boosting my immunity system. But it's torture for me to eat broccoli without disguising the flavor of broccoli. So I need to get online and chat with someone else who is having a similar problem. I have the same problem with salmon, so I also plan to ask for salmon recipes that disguise the flavor of the salmon."

--"My dogs are acting confused these days, since they are used to my leaving the home every day at 7 a.m. Maybe I'm getting a complex, but it just seems to me that even my dogs are getting tired of spending more time than usual with me during this period. And dogs are like guaranteed friends for life, so that shows how low my self-esteem has fallen because of COVID-19."

--"I got a phone call from a Christian friend who asked me if I plan to look upon this crisis as an opportunity for a born-again experience. I almost snapped at them, but I decided not to. I have been snapping at everyone else, but I realize this is just the way Christians are. They are well-intended about it, and they think now is the right opportunity to sell me on turning into a Christian."

--"Can you imagine how tragic it would be if you were married to someone and both of you got sick from the virus but only one of the two of you survived. So it would all come down to a very poignant and very sad deathbed one-to-one meeting. This might sound great for a Hollywood movie that ends tragically, but in real life it would be pure hell to sense that you gave your spouse the COVID-19 virus and you watched them die in front of you."

---"I wish I could attend a Virtual Art Exhibit from my home during this period. That's one thing we can always count on here, is lots of art museums and possibly even the chance to visit one from your home television set inside your h"ome. I wonder how I could read the explanatory detail about each artwork, though, if I'm sitting here in my home trying to take in one of our art museums."

--"I'm virtually poverty-stricken during this period, so I need to find out how much they would charge me to take a Virtual Tour of a Virtual Art Exhibit here from my living room. If they are willing to bill me for six months later, that would be great, but I can't afford to pay a lot of money for a Virtual Art Exhibit during this period when I'm laid off."

---"I need to get a map for the entire 100-mile radius around Manhattan, in order to figure out where it might be safest for me to temporarily rent an apartment during this period. The safest place is the city or town or county where the fewest number of persons tested positive. I would view it as a 'Far From the Maddening Crowd' type of temporary relocation experience, and years later I would congratulate myself in my memoirs for having escaped from New York in order to wait for the COVID stuff to go away."


---"If the taxi services here would promise to test their drivers on a daily basis and refuse to let them drive if they test positive, that would be very reassuring to me. But I don't know of any taxi service like that, unfortunately. As long as the sneeze shield between myself and my driver has no gaps in it, I should be pretty safe riding a taxi here. No one wants to look back when they're on a deathbed because of COVID-19 and say they are sure it was their taxi driver who did that to them."

--"I need to join a group like New York Claustrophobes Anonymous. But I can't attend any meetings during this period, since that's not an option. Maybe the president of that group could offer members and prospective members a Virtual meeting opportunity through some type of online chatting experience with the leaders and members."

---"Oddly enough, I kind of miss all the body odors of other New Yorkers during this period in which I'm inside my home all day. Every day was full of an intriguing variety of fragrances and aromas---New Yorkers excel in that category. Is it perverse of me to actually miss the way New Yorkers smell when you are standing near them at a subway station?"

---"I think the thing I miss the LEAST from being inside my home all day is facing a beggar on the street and trying to decide whether he might turn violent if I say 'no' to him. I've had a tradition of politely telling our city's beggars that I myself don't have any money on me, but maybe someone else will help them out, I always add with a nice smile. This seems to help me avoid being subjected to violence by the many beggars in our city who approach me every day."