A LATE MAY 2020 IMAGINARY EAVESDROPPER'S REPORT FROM MANHATTAN: WHAT NEW YORKERS COULD HAVE BEEN SAYING AT THE TIME, HAD YOU BEEN THERE TO OVERHEAR THEIR QUOTABLE COMMENTS

---"Last week I visited Fifth Avenue exactly zero occasions, to protect my safety. So what did I do inside my home? I ate a total of 10 '5th Avenue' candy bars, to celebrate my fondness for that famous street I'm currently staying away from to avoid anyone sending saliva my way there when I'm crossing the street there on foot. I do admit, however, that eating lots of candy bars may have increased my risk of having a heart attack. I guess I'm like everyone else, I like for myself is whether they are from Southern or Northern Italy. My theory is that Southern Italians are more likely to open their mouths and loudly declare their opinions on the subway. I love free speech, but I hate saliva coming from the mouths of opinionated New Yorkers on the subway. I've turned into an Anti-Saliva Activist. I want everyone to jot down their opinions and save them for the blog-writing when they get home. That way, no one gets infected by them."

---"I openly admit that I like the fact that Scandinavian immigrants here don't open their mouths as much as most of the other immigrants we have here. Scandinavians tend to be more close-mouthed when they talk, which works out perfectly for me during the COVID-19 crisis. My blood pressure goes way down from sensing that no saliva is being sent my way when I talk briefly with a Scandinavian standing six feet or more away from me on the subway."

---"It frightens me to think of how many New Yorkers have joined the ranks of organized crime out of financial desperation after they were laid off because of COVID-19. I wish I were a billionaire so I could invite financially-challenged New Yorkers at risk of turning into crooks to apply for a grant from my foundation. My foundation would help to spare them from ANY INVOLVEMENT WITH ORGANIZED CRIME FOR THE REMAINDER OF THEIR LIVES!"

--"It must be quite a culture shock for the many straight-laced New Yorkers who are being approached by thugs at a time when their finances are very strained. The straight New Yorkers want to vomit when they see the thugs come up to them with an offer. But they also know that paying rent is extremely difficult these days."

--"I need to find out which type of bath would kill the virus on my body the most successfully. If I paid for a nice sauna bath, would that be more successful in killing the virus on my body than if I took a regular shower in my apartment?"

---"I wish I lived on a top-floor apartment that had a private elevator to my floor that no one else here in New York ever rides on. What would be one day to reduce my exposure risk. Maybe I could find out if any of the apartment complexes offer a private-elevator ride option for tenants willing to pay extra for it?"

--"Maybe I should contact a local news media company and explain my plight. I could tell them that I've been approached by five different organized-crime groups promising to pay my apartment rent for the rest of the year if I join their group and do occasional low-risk favors for them. It would make a great news-feature story for some local TV news program, but I might be at risk of immediate retaliation after that report is broadcast. I might end up as a body floating down the Hudson River!"

---"Every day offers another news story about the latest celebrity to have sustained the COVID-19 virus. I wish I could find the energy to send a sympathy card to each of them, but I am already fatigued from the pandemic. It's very disorganizing, since it completely ruins all my normal routines."

---"I keep hoping that all of the movies on television I normally watch would be shown in newly revised form so no one exchanges any saliva or stands more than six feet from anyone else. It would be more sensitive toward persons enduring the current crisis if we could see societal reinforcement of our social-distancing through the Hollywood actors' screen performances."

--"I find it eerie that all the Hollywood actors I watch portraying the President of the United States seem more convincing than Donald Trump in that role. Maybe he could work out a deal that would allow the best Hollywood actor Presidents to each substitute for President Trump for a day in the White House. We might achieve some major progress for our entire country, provided that Donald Trump spent the day golfing and didn't interfere in their Presidential performance in any way."

--"The insects in my apartment are so aggressive and efficient that I never leave any drink or snack in my kitchen when I have to go to the bathroom to urinate. I carry that drink or snack with me into my bathroom and put it on my bathroom counter, as my way of thwarting the super-fast pests that hide in the kitchen area. This is just one more example of how we New Yorkers have to be very strategic 24 hours a day, even when our guard would normally be down inside our locked apartment unit."

---"Every time I watch a Hollywood movie that I like on my television, I end up feeling a bit sad because I just added another name of a Hollywood actor who deserves a nice thank-you note, but I also doubt I'll get around to sending that thank-you note. I usually have about a 20-year delay time on sending thank-you notes to Hollywood actors for outstanding performances in a movie that I particularly enjoyed."

---"I don't understand how they're going to write a nice eulogy honoring our dear friend's life if he's getting cremated at his request and there isn't any memorial service planned. Will everything be online, so that the eulogy itself will never be tape-recorded, much less verbalized? If we are moving toward written eulogies and nothing being spoken to honor the most recent
COVID-19 victim, it seems tragic that there is no human voice to it all."

---"I wish that our friend had specified where he wants his ashes to be scattered. If he had specified the Adirondack Mountains, I would welcome that opportunity to drive up there and do that for him. We could then videotape the scattering of ashes at his favorite mountain peak in upstate New York and share that special moment with everyone."

--"So many people all over the world equate New York City with death. Maybe we should have a sign greeting people as they enter our city that says, 'Welcome to Our World-famous Fatal-Attraction City'."

---"Unfortunately, even some of the postcards being sold in New York these days contain macabre scenes of human carnage here. I am outraged that some photographer with a sadistic and perverse sense of humor is trying to profit financially from all the deaths occurring here because of COVID-19."

---"Can you imagine being the CEO of Met Life right now? I can't see any way they can be making any profit right now, when every day they are paying out a lot more on life insurance policies and health-insurance policies than they normally would be."

---"I have never met the CEO of Met Life, and I wish that I had. If I'd invited him to a cocktail party here in Manhattan, at least I would have some leverage with him so I could call him up and ask for a special delay on paying my missed premiums. I could cite COVID-19 as my reason for my delay. I assume he has some leeway if he knows a client and attended a cocktail party they had hosted."

---"If Met Life would offer a new Pandemic Insurance Policy, I would definitely be willing to spend $20 a month on that for the rest of my life. Knowing all the ships that dock here from all over the world, of course we'll continue to be the cutting edge of every new disease that arrives on American shores. If I had a Pandemic Insurance Policy, I would just call Met Life the minute I learn about the next Pandemic and review what the exclusions are on my coverage. Then after I covered that angle, I could relax inside my condo unit and watch a nice cheerful romantic comedy that ends happily and with tons of optimism about our entire nation's and world's future."

--"Whenever I go to my bathroom to take a shower at nighttime, I hear odd noises like someone is breaking into my bolt-locked unit. They seem to know that when I'm naked and in the shower, I am not as likely to jump out of my shower stall to investigate. I find it very odd that they also seem to know EXACTLY when I have entered my bathroom to take my shower before I go to bed, even though I take my shower at a variety of times partly to anticipate and thwart potential home-invasion crimes perpetrators."

--"I need to find some wonderfully scented dried flowers bouquets that I can place in each room of my apartment during this depressing pandemic. The flowers will help to boost my morale in each room of my unit, 24 hours a day. I think they can even help me to make my nocturnal dreams more cheerful and optimistic, assuming my nostrils can smell the naturally-scented flowers when I'm sleeping."

--"What I need right now is a book with a title such as, 'Profiles in Courage: Great Leaders at Combating Previous and Current Pandemics On This Planet.' Each chapter would be devoted to profiling a separate great leader against pandemics, and I would read one chapter per day until I was through with the book. I am amazed that I haven't seen a great read like that being promoted online. I would gladly order it through a mail-order company, if I could. Maybe I should call The New York Times and ask an editor there is they are willing to sponsor a new book of that type that would help to inspire everyone throughout the remainder of this very severe pandemic."

--"What I need is a computer-generated nocturnal dreams report every morning that will remind me of what my leading sources of hysteria are this week in New York. Walking to the subway station is one source of hysteria; standing at the subway station ranks high on my list; and at this point I'm not sure I ever do anything at all that doesn't raise my blood pressure. Maybe when I hug my pet poodle, that is the one activity I do each day that seems to calm me down after a hysteria-filled day away from my apartment unit. This is one way in which I can identify with the late novelist Jacqueline Susann and her popular book entitled 'Every Night, Josephine!' that was about her love affair with her pet poodle."

--"To me, the best thing going on in my life these days are fresh mandarin oranges. I'm eating two or three of them every day inside my home-sweet-home apartment. I figure that the Vitamin C antioxidants will help me to endure another day of indignity when I leave my apartment and face the dreaded COVID-19 scene again."

--"Whenever I see a New Yorker not wearing a mask, I get angry because it's like he's telling me he doesn't care whether I live or die. He is also telling me that he feels sure he'll never get charged with Homicide by Moisture Droplet Perpetration. What we need are more detectives who specialize in documenting homicide or attempted homicide by moisture droplet perpetration!"

--"I dread it when we get very light rainfall outdoors during COVID-19. I dread the moisture from the clouds because I am never completely sure whether the moisture came from the clouds or from a dangerous human being standing near me along West 34th Street while releasing lethal dosages of moisture from his mouth or nostrils."

--"If I attended a pro baseball game at Yankee Stadium and I saw what looked like a spitball, I would have to file criminal charges against the pitcher for trying to murder the batter with the pitcher's saliva. I don't know how I would handle that citizen's arrest, though, since I'm more likely to get arrested myself if I attempt to confront the pitcher in the middle of the ball game."

--"So many of my nightmares during my sleep feature a pitcher throwing a spitball at me, and some of the saliva on that spitball ends up on my hands or face as I'm trying to figure out how to hit the ball. It's a classic COVID-19 crisis situation that gets explored in excruciating detail while I'm snoring on my bed."

---"The COVID-19 crisis is exposing to everyone the embarrassing fact that a high percentage of the men of New York like to spit onto the ground several times per day in order to prove that they could have been a good spitball pitcher, had they gotten recruited by a pro baseball team. The saliva they release sometimes gets caught in the wind, and at that point the innocent bystanders like me are at the mercy of the amateur spitball pitcher."

--"I wonder how you broach the subject of COVID-19 if you get asked out on a date during this crisis. It might sound too blunt if you ask him whether he's been tested yet. If he says 'yes', I would still have to ask him when he got tested, and has he had any symptoms since then, such as a sore throat, a fever, a cough, abdominal pain, etc. Another thought is that I might ask him if I can take a raincheck on our first-ever date. As soon as the cure for COVID-19 is discovered, I'll agree to go out with him. "

--"I hate to think of her dying without an elegantly appreciative eulogy I could then quote for the rest of my life whenever I refer to her. If they die here without a memorial service their chances are slim to none of getting remembered with a eulogy. It's a very crass way of responding to death in New York. The most you'll hear will be, 'Nice vase they chose for her ashes.' That thought makes me want to puke. Instead of admiring her as a human being, we're talking vases and whether they're attractive enough to do justice to the deceased."

--"Maybe I should buy a catalog that highlights the finer points of vases and how to match a vase design and vase material to a particular dead body after they're turned into ashes. Some vases probably look more feminine than others; but I don't know that the deceased would mind if a unisex vase were used to hold their ashes."

--"How much oxygen do you lose each day when you're wearing a face mask? I agree on the importance of wearing the mask. But I need to figure out how I can get my daily quota of oxygen into my body that I normally would be getting if my nostrils and mouth weren't covered."

---"Halloween will never be the same after this. When I see everyone in masks at Halloween, I will have a sudden flashback to this pandemic that almost causes me to cry, but the children at the front door will want me to smile when I hand out the treats. So I have to find a way to avoid thinking COVID-19 when I see those masks at the front door."

---"Saliva will never be the same for me after this. Whenever I see saliva in the future, I will immediately need proof that the saliva I'm looking at is disease-free. I might even ask the person producing the saliva if they can prove to me they're disease-free."

--"It's odd how often I refer to 'saliva' these days without being sure how to say 'saliva' in Italian or in Latin. I'm guessing that the word 'saliva' comes from a Latin or Italian word, but I have never felt a need to read an entire book devoted to the subject of saliva. Maybe I will buy a book of that type in order to avoid shying away from the subject of saliva during this crisis we're having."

--"I prefer it when the men around me are not salivating. If they salivate with desire toward a pretty lady walking near them, this could be a fatal attraction for me, since I'm the innocent bystander who might end up with their saliva on my face or hands from that moment of lust here in Manhattan."

--"I try to avoid looking upward at the skyscrapers these days. My focus has to be ground-level, in order to stay focused on where my threats to my health are coming from. The only exception to that is if some evil guy is dumping a bucketful of saliva from a window 50 stories above that is aimed at innocent pedestrians down here like myself. My hope would be that I could live long enough to testify against him in a court of law. But you never know with COVID-19. The court hearing for the accused might take place THREE weeks after the incident, and any of us witnesses could die before then inside a hospital because of the saliva-dumping crime we were subjected to against our wishes."