ANOTHER IMAGINARY VISIT TO NEW YORK CITY, FOR ADDITIONAL IMAGINARY NOTES ABOUT WHAT NEW YORKERS ARE SAYING TO EACH OTHER: A SEMI-FICTITIOUS EAVESDROPPER'S REPORT FROM MANHATTAN

 

---"One of the reasons I'm less worried about home-invasion crimes these days is that even the criminal types are afraid of catching COVID if they break into my home. Fear of catching COVID from the victim is one of the leading deterrents to home-invasion crimes these days here in Manhattan."

--"You can always tell if someone is new to New York by a verbal slip they make when they refer to Manhattan. They will say 'on Manhattan', thinking of the island, but everyone who has been here for more than six months says 'in Manhattan'."

--"I think most New Yorkers develop a split personality in order to survive. During the daytime we are working hard at our very straight career pursuits. At nighttime we spend a lot of our time on our personal computer trying to figure out who the criminals are and how criminals think. We are desperately paying absurdly high fees to ex-convicts who specialize in offering expert advice to potential crime victims on how they can thwart a would-be home-invasion-crimes perpetrator."

--"I plan to play Santa this Holiday Season by buying all my friends and relatives the same present. It will be a T-shirt that declares, 'I SURVIVED THE PANDEMIC OF 2019, 2020, AND 2021, AND I'M ALIVE TODAY TO TELL YOU ALL ABOUT IT!"

---"Can you imagine how bored our grandchildren will be whenever we tell them lengthy stories 20 years from now about how we responded heroically  to the Great American Pandemic, and we watch them fall asleep on us as we begin to talk about hysteria about human saliva that swept our entire country and ruined the lives of millions?"

--"I need to come up with a list of the Hollywood movies most likely to relieve my anxieties during the current medical crisis. I need to feel good in order to protect my immune system, and a feel-good Hollywood movie is crucial to my own survival during this pandemic panic, as I call it."

--"You always have been keen on alliteration. Are you the first one on our block to refer to it as a 'Pandemic Panic', or was that something you saw in a tabloid headline in the Post?"

---"Maybe I should make a dessert that resembles human saliva, but it actually appetizing and good for your health. So many of us have developed intense fears of human saliva because of the current crisis, and a dessert dish that LOOKS like saliva without actually containing any saliva is just what my husband and I need to endure the daily anti-saliva crisis."

--"I'm not looking forward to reading estimates on how many years of creatively-vital medical longevity the medical researchers will determine that I lost from contracting COVID-19 in May of this year. I am very sure an estimate of that type will be getting published soon, and I know I'll get depressed from reading that shocking-news online report from CNN."

---"At least none of my relatives are faulting me this year for failure to do more in the way of upward mobility in my career pursuits. Can you imagine attending a job interview only to find out that you not only didn't get the job, but the interviewer plans to sue you because you allegedly infected them with COVID-19 during the interview, with that possibly fatal moment for the interviewer having been captured by a videotape of the spit suddenly coming out of your facemask during the interview, and you can't challenge the legality of the videotape since you gave your prior consent to it because of your fear that you'd never land the job if you declined to authorize the full close-up videotaping of your entire lower face throughout the entire interview."

---"One of my favorite strategies for not turning into an Human Vegetable Alzheimer's Case is I'll say 'Schenectady, New York' loudly over and over again in the shower until I'm blue in the face. I'll always been fascinated by that name for a city, though I never bothered to find out how it got that name. Saying the name seems to trigger some blood flow into my brain---an antidote to Alzheimer's, I'm 99 percent sure of that."

--"My favorite tongue twister is---but gosh, I seem to have forgotten my all-time favorite tongue twister. Does that mean it's too late, that I've already got early symptoms for Alzheimer's and it's not reversible at this point? I know that diabetes can be reversible, but I don't recall having ever read that Alzheimer's is reversible. Or is my not recalling any such medical-study finding just another sign that I already have Alzheimer's and my only option left is which type of human vegetable do I turn into---a Human Potato Head or a Human Banana Brain?"

---"I agree with you that practicing tongue-twisters like Schenectady is one way to fight off Alzheimer's. Tongue-twisters stimulate the brain cells, so you are very right it makes sense for you to send a thank-you note to the Mayor of Schenectady if you find out at age 75 that you haven't contacted Alzheimer's by then. You might even consider visiting Schenectady by train in order to thank the mayor there in person for providing you with the ideal tongue-twister to stimulate your brain enough to keep Alzheimer's away forever."

---"One bright side to the current crisis is that everyone loves their pet dog more than ever. Your pet dog will never infect you with COVID, and you are feeling very, very grateful for that every day of your life these days. Most of us want to reward our dog with special 'Thank You' biscuits to show our appreciation during the pandemic. But this assumes that our dog knows how to read the message on the biscuit that says 'thank you'."