APRIL 2020 IMAGINARY EAVESDROPOPER's REPORT FROM NEW YORK CITY

---"I am very fortunate that I have a photographic memory during this crisis. I remember each and every New Yorker who coughed near me without covering their mouth or without coughing into their sleeve. Those are the ones I want to avoid like the plague, if you'll pardon the pun. I can't believe I'm doing a pun during a very serious crisis like this. I guess we can't be dead-serious 24 hours a day."

--"I need to wear gloves everywhere I go. They could help spare me from being victimized by all these filthy, grimy, always-contaminated-with-every-conceivable-disease neighbors of mine! When this is all over, I'll be all the more determined to exclude my unsanitary neighbors from all of the social events I host!"

--"At least I enjoy cuddling with my poodle during this crisis. I made a telemed call to my Veterinarian, and he assured me that it's perfectly safe for me to sleep with my poodle and hug my miniature French poodle throughout this entire COVID-19 crisis."

--"You may even find that sleeping with your French poodle will help you to handle the stress of COVID-19 whenever you have to leave your apartment and face the hordes of virus-carriers all over Manhattan. Maybe you could convince your medical school employer to do a study after this crisis is over in which a variety of New Yorkers who survived are interviewed about whether they cuddled with their pet dog on a daily basis throughout this ghoulish pandemic. I don't know your medical school's study could then get the answers for the comparison group---the ones who didn't survive the crisis. Maybe they could interview relatives of the deceased and ask them if they knew whether the person who died had been physically intimate with a pet dog during the crisis."

--"Whenever I have to go out in public these days, I dread the ones who are sweating. I feel sure the sweat can travel from their body onto mine, if I'm not fully alert at all times. Even their sweat could be fatal, if I'm not mistaken."

---"I can barely breathe while wearing my surgical mask in public these days. But if I try to take my mask off briefly to get some fresh air, that could be the one moment when spit is flying right at me from yet another hyper-aggressive New Yorker who is facing toward me while declaring loudly that he is very angry that COVID-19 has cramped his social life!"

---"I am having to consult my thesaurus to find the right words to describe what I'm experiencing here in New York these days. My everyday vocabulary can't handle this type of situation. I thought of  the word 'cataclysmic' today, but I never use that word so I need to re-check my dictionary for the exact definition before I tell everyone that it's been a Truly Cataclysmic Experience!"

---"Do you know whether any of the morticians of New York have contracted the virus from working with corpses during this crisis period? I'm glad I'm not a mortician. I just feel it isn't fair to them if they are working with a diseased corpse that might inflict fatal exposure on themselves that comes from a dead person!"

---"I was especially disgusted and appalled by that homeless woman shouting 'Come and Get me, COVID 19!' at the top of her lungs from the street corner. It should be illegal for her to be so openly suicidal in public!"

---"This seems like an 'Apocalypse Now' type of experience. But I feel a bit superficial for quoting a Hollywood movie title in order to describe what's going on here these days."

---"I check the weather report every day to find out how windy it is. My thinking is that if it's very windy outside and I am going outdoors to take a taxi to a store, the velocity of the wind could put saliva on my cheek before I have a chance to open the back door of a taxi and get in. Windy days here can potentially be fatal. This is my idea of a wise saying during COVID-19."

--"Maybe we have a need for a new online book that is focused on Wise Sayings for Surviving the COVID-19 Crisis. If I created something like that online, I might be able to earn enough money to pay my rent for next month. That will be a herculean challenge, and I'm definitely NOT Hercules!"

---"I am very determined to outlive COVID-19, since I haven't even begun writing my memoirs yet. If I had finished writing my memoirs, maybe I would have been less focused at all times on protecting my own safety."

--"I think everyone in New York is savoring their memory of the last occasion in which they dined inside a five-star restaurant here. For me, that was December 30, 2019. It's been all downhill ever since. Or maybe I should say that it's been all uphill ever since. I feel like I'm doing rock climbing every day and there is no net below or trampoline below to catch me if I fall."

--"Maybe I should add to my hobbies a year-round very intense pursuit of education about how to survive any and all future pandemics here. I need to be fully prepared and fully knowledgeable in order to survive. Maybe I should try to get a PhD in Pandemic Studies, so I'll be 100 percent ready for our next disaster. But I don't know for a fact that Columbia or NYU offer a PhD in Pandemic Studies. Maybe if I had a friend who's a billionaire, I could talk him into endowing a special degree program in Pandemic Studies, so I could earn the first PhD in that program. It would be quite an honor to be New York's first-ever Pandemic Studies PhD. I would be guaranteed of a place in the New York City Almanac that for decades into the future will cite me as the first-ever here in that category."

---"I wonder what Batman would have done during a crisis like this, assuming this were Gotham City. He would have probably flown to each location where saliva was flying toward an unsuspecting New Yorker's face, and Batman would have sent the saliva flying back into the mouth of the perpetrator."

---"Maybe New Yorkers who spit a lot should wear mouth guards during this period to avoid sending their saliva six feet or more onto the bodies of other New Yorkers."

---"Can you imagine being a speech therapist here during this period, trying to help a student whose speech defect causes him to spit six feet or longer every time he opens his mouth? Wouldn't that be horrifying, if you were a speech therapist during COVID-19?"

---"When I have a heart-to-heart talk with my wife during this period, we always make sure there's six feet or more between us and and we're communicating by walkie-talkie so we don't have to shout at each other in order to be heard. If we had to shout, one of us might accidentally infect the other  with COVID-contaminated saliva."

--"I have figured out a way to toughen myself during this crisis. I can watch all of the best Hollywood movies on my television set about citywide disasters that New York City has faced. King Kong was one such disaster here, I just can't remember the other ones."

---"I have eaten so much broccoli in order to boost my immunity system during this crisis that I think I've reached my saturation point with broccoli.  Maybe I could cremate my broccoli in a blender and then mix it into my soup or stew so I would barely notice the broccoli when I'm eating it. Broccoli works best in disguised form."

---"Too bad no billionaire has established a 'Hero of the Day' contest in which he gives out $10,000 to each person here in New York who during the most recent 24-hour period exhibited great courage and heroism in response to COVID-19. Maybe I should call all my rich friends and ask if any of them knows an actual billionaire who could afford to sponsor something like that."

---"This crisis sure has taught us all a very costly lesson. If you ask a New Yorker to be quiet and don't talk, they do exactly the opposite. What this crisis is exposing is that we have a city of loudmouths and blabbermouths and egomaniacs who are constantly releasing moisture from their mouths because they've got their mouths open all day. They see themselves as Dictators of the Universe, and everyone else is a peon they rule over."

---"This crisis is exposing the weakness of my apartment unit's furniture from an orthopedic standpoint. I can't sit in my chair for more than an hour without feeling uncomfortable, and I need much better back support than I currently get. If I survive this crisis, I will rush to the closest furniture store that specializes in chairs and couches that are good for your back and behind and neck. I am having to bend over at my desk, since my desk is too low inside my apartment unit."

---"I am dreading that inevitable news story when a Christian Scientist here in New York tests positive for COVID-19, but refuses medication since it's against her religious beliefs. Maybe Governor Cuomo will intervene and force the medication down her throat until she has fully recovered. Then if she wants to sue the City of New York or State of New York or the U.S. Government for forcing her to take medication for COVID, she can file that lawsuit later this year. I'm sure she wouldn't win, though, since the government attorney can prove in a court of law that exercising her freedom of religion would have been fatal to her."

---"My God, I haven't been to a cocktail party for months because of this crisis. It's a complete disaster for my social life and career. How can I be upwardly mobile here without attending cocktail parties and cozying up to the Movers and Shakers of Manhattan?"

--"Maybe you should establish a Virtual Cocktail Party online opportunity for you and your social-climbing associates to all attend from inside their home."

---"I haven't even had a hangover all year, since I figured out I had to be sober at all times to avoid being fatally attacked by human saliva. I can't say that I miss my hangovers, but they at least gave me something to complain about with my family and friends. It was kind of fun to hear all the suggestions they'd offer on how to recover the fastest from a hangover."

--"All of us know of someone in New York who has identified himself as our Enemy for Life, and who would relish the opportunity to spit onto our face if we go out in public, and then call attention to it by saying it was quite an accident and he hasn't been tested yet if that's any reassurance to me."

--"At least this crisis is giving me an opportunity to figure out how to increase my earnings from the advertising clicks I get from my personal blogsite. So far I've earned $35 after 10 years of my blogsite, and I don't get paid until I earn my first $100. So maybe I should try something desperate, such as if I spice up my blog and make it full of profanity and X-rated humor that will definitely earn me some clicks on my ads."

---"Don't think of it as a crisis. Think of it as a dramatic movie in which you are a star performer portraying a recluse in the midst of adversity. This will allow you to see yourself as a potential Oscar winner, when this real-life crisis is all over. You can even practice what your acceptance speech will be like, which might turn viral on You Tube, if you'll forgive that use of the word 'viral'."

---"I wish they wouldn't about anything going 'viral' on You Tube. I am so sick of the word 'virus' right now that I am willing to spend $10,000 to sponsor a contest to find a new word to substitute for 'viral' whenever to a frequently-watched You Tube performance."

---"A crisis like this makes me wish I hadn't criticized so many doctors in our city. If I end up in the ER, some of them will immediately identify as a patient they dislike intensely and are determined to provide third-class medical care to. So their attempt at revenge could potentially be fatal to me. My only consolation is that the administrator of my estate would be willing to sue them for medical malpractice. But posthumous consolations are never all that solid."

---"The persons you want to avoid having any communications with during this crisis are anyone who ever physically assaulted you on any prior occasion. If you communicate with or anger any them, they might froth at their mouth and put you in the emergency room with their flash of volatility."

---"The way they spray spit all over the place, I get the impression that a lot of New Yorkers don't revere human life as sacred. This is quite an eye-opener for me."

---"I barely even hear the honking noises anymore, since I'm never outdoors  or behind the wheel and my apartment's walls are fully sound-proofed. I'm so accustomed to those daily honking noises from motorists that they're like music to my ears, they prove I'm here and no one kidnapped me during my sleep and relocated me to a very quiet place like Buffalo."