OVERHEARD IN MANHATTAN: THE IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS THAT NEW YORKERS MIGHT BE HAVING THIS MONTH

---"I used to be an Embassy Party groupie, but COVID-19 has ruined that for me. The last party I attended was at the Italian embassy, and no one was smiling. What's the point of keeping up my dues-paying membership in the United Nations Association if I don't even get invited to Embassy parties anymore?"

---"I'm so worried about getting sick and dying because of COVID-19 that I need to have my last will and testament re-written ASAP. Some of the names of beneficiaries who are currently on there probably don't deserve it. However, my attorney is not willing to meet with me in person during this period. He says I'll need a virtual appointment with him to discuss which names I drop from my will and which names I add to my will as beneficiaries. He also says that even if I make those changes through an email to him that he translates into a legal document, it would take him another six months before my attorney would be able to officially file my revised will with the County Clerk's Office."

--"Anyone who spits at me or coughs at me or sneezes at me during this period, they get immediately removed from my last will and testament. No exceptions to that policy. I'm very adamant about that point."

--"The only compliments I get these days are about the mask I'm wearing. Everyone seems to like the color, I wish I could say I'm getting goosebumps from those types of compliments, but I'm not. I've never seen myself as a Gentleman's Quarterly type of guy. Fashion is strictly something I pursue strategically, and that is all: to land a higher-paying job, and to impress a business associate. That's it."

--"I'm glad no one is asking me about my romantic life these days. I would have to tell them that my most passionate relationship is with my pet poodle. I sleep with her every night and I never worry about getting COVID-19 from that much-loved canine friend of mine."

---"The most terrorized looks I see all day are the facial expressions of the bus drivers here. Every new passenger boarding the bus is immediately suspected as being a prospective Homme Fatale or Femme Fatale for the driver."

---"I would like to take a virtual tour of the Statue of Liberty, as one way of celebrating New York at its finest. I would want to stay as far away as possible from her nostrils and mouth, however, if that's possible. I'm very suspicious about being anywhere close to the mouth or nostrils of anyone except my pet poodle these days."

--"When I do rewrite my last will and testament, maybe I should include a special scholarship fund for graduating high school students who plan to pursue a career in Pandemic Studies. This might also help to encourage NYU and CUNY to offer Pandemic Studies as a subject that undergraduate students can major in. This could also help our metro area to respond more intelligently the next time we get struck by a pandemic here."

---"I'll be so out of experience at hosting parties after this that I may have to hire a consultant before I try doing that again. The consultant could offer me tips on how to limit total number of guests to 10 or fewer and discourage any and all jokes during the party in which anyone opens their mouth while laughing."

---"This COVID-19 crisis is exposing my own failure to develop an online freelance relationship with a media company that would pay me for story ideas or brief articles. I just now remembered, and this is admittedly about 10 years later, that I did get one reply e-mail from the editor of 'The Progressive' magazine in Madison, Wisconsin, in which he replied that the particular e-mail I'd sent him did not trigger a 'green light' from him. I should have seen that as a very generous invitation to find story ideas he might actually like and keep submitting them until he gave me the green light on one of them. At that point, my online freelancing career would finally get started!"

---"The COVID-19 crisis was perfectly timed for blocking criminal investigations. I'm the complainant in a still unsolved NYPD case, and the detectives keep telling me on the telephone that they are not able to pursue the investigation any further until the pandemic goes away. They then advise me to try calling them back 12 months from now, if I'm still alive at that point. They seem to have difficulty restraining a laugh from their end of the phone line when they say that. There's nothing like the candor of NYPD detectives."

---"Who knows, maybe someday NYU will offer a class in the History of Obstruction of Justice in New York, and one of the topics they'll explore will be all the major crime cases that got deep-sixed by NYPD to avoid getting saliva from anyone during the COVID-19 crisis. I don't know what the alternative would have been, but I have good reason to be cynical. I've been a criminal-law complainant for the same case since 2016, and still to this very day there's no one in jail at Rikers Island who's there because of me. "

--"All my friends are searching for a pandemic-proof city in which to move to when this is all over. It seems a bit grim, but at least it proves they want to live until age 100. Then maybe the Times will send a feature writer to their nursing home in that pandemic-proof city in order to find out what the secret for the longevity was. The secret was that the featured centenarian had fled from New York just at the right time, they would reply."

---"At least this crisis has helped everyone to rethink their priorities. I'm a lot more focused on surviving the next two-week period than I previously was. I see all of life as a series of two-week periods in which my goal is to continue testing negative throughout that entire period."

--"I plan to make a donation to NYPD for erection of a special public monument honoring each of the NYPD officers who died because of COVID-19. This is one way in which I can show my appreciation for law-and-order during this period. I want the monument to be at a public place that most people will see each month. Central Park is one possibility, but I'm open to suggestions."

---"You should contact NYPD to find out if they have established a Memorial Fund inviting donations toward a monument honoring all NYPD officers who died because of COVID-19. If they don't have a fund like that established, you might have to ask your attorney to help you get that started. You could probably start that by calling his law office, and he would handle the rest of it for you, assuming that the NYPD Police Commissioner likes the idea."