Make your scratches on the wall counting the days small enough so that you don’t run out of room, and always make them at the same time of day so that you don’t get confused.

No matter how bad it tastes, you need to eat the prison food, I mean frozen dinners, to keep up your strength.

Have alternate plans of escape in case the guards, I mean doormen, catch on to one of them.

Don’t try to escape in the rain using a fake gun carved from a bar of soap.

When getting help to escape from someone on the outside (like your Amazon delivery person), it’s okay to shake hands with them if they have dry leprosy, which isn’t contagious, but not if they have COVID-19.

I ordered a picture of Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. to cover the tunnel I’m digging in the wall using spatulas I ordered from Amazon (slow work).

I’m using Google Maps to inform my digging so that my tunnel comes out in a safe area, and not where the guards can see me, like in the lobby.

I ordered a thousand yards of dental floss from Amazon, which can be tied together to create a rope to climb down the side of the building.

Using all the boxes I’ve received from Amazon, I’m building a boat made out of cardboard, as instructed on a cardboard boat racing website I found, to launch at the beach (if I can get past the police roadblocks there) and sail to the Marshall Islands, where no cases of coronavirus have yet been reported.

How did prisoners escape before Amazon?

I went to an online meeting of Handshakers Anonymous (HA) yesterday. It was exhilarating. I personally never have felt addicted to handshaking, which can transfer more than just the coronavirus, but I have been an enabler.

In the past, I never offered my hand, because half the time you wound up with the macho hand squeeze, the pretentious limp hand, the disgusting finger-palm tickle, or the sweaty palm that made you want to emulate Adrian Monk and immediately call for a wipe, which, of course, you can’t do very well these days, because the stores are sold out.

But, unless I quickly thought to ad lib emulated cold symptoms so as to subversively dissuade the offer, I would go along with the shake, even as my mind raced with thoughts of the negative possibilities that might ensue, not the least of which was that the person might think I liked them.

So I wasn’t at the meeting to address my own addiction, but rather to learn how to help others fight their addiction. Various methods were offered. For example, you can go straight in for a hug if you know the person well enough or aren’t concerned about ever running for public office. If you act fast enough, you can dictate the fist bump in lieu of the handshake, and, as a bonus, make the other person feel hip.

And now, with HA crawling into mainstream society, one need not feel ashamed or hesitant to decline a shake by telling someone that you’re in recovery. For that, you might even get a pat on the back, which is okay, unless it’s found to be a gateway contact.

Shelter in Place – the Rolling Stones revised version of Gimme Shelter, not to be confused with the psychological thriller sequel to the movie Shelter Island, where people try to get into the heads of their dogs

Patient Zero – a patient with no redeeming qualities, not to be confused with zero patience, which can result from being stuck at home with someone with no redeeming qualities

Community Spread – love handles

Herd Immunity – a get-out-of-the-house-free card, not to be confused with the President having heard that we all might already have immunity

Coronavirus Vaccine – a potential immunity producer, pending development, testing, and Jenny McCarthy announcing that she has proof that it causes people to grow a sixth toe on their left foot

Physical Distancing – an excuse for not visiting your in-laws forevermore

Social Distancing – a misnomer that can be used as an excuse for not responding to emails, as it has yet to be proven that the virus cannot be transmitted through the tubes that make up the Internet

Drive-thru Testing – having someone else taste the food you picked up from McDonalds before you eat it, a good idea even before coronavirus

Flatten the Curve – a proposed Chicago construction project, since 2013, to straighten Lake Shore Drive, which apparently they forgot to do during the 90 million dollar, 1982-1986 project to straighten Lake Shore Drive

Pandemic versus Epidemic – the first of many planned supervillain movies, as superhero movies have run their course, and then some

Telemedicine – a way to wait an hour for the doctor without having to leave home

Wimbledon, actually cancelled (and thereby my invitation to sit in the Queen’s box), not postponed, so that they can collect 141 million dollars on their pandemic insurance.

Candlelight Concerts produced by Fever. I think there was a run on candles. And, times being what they are, they need to change the company’s name.

Porchlight Music Theatre’s production of Freaky Friday. It’s being rewritten as Freaky Everyday.

Earth Day. The air hasn’t been this unpolluted since pre-Michael Crichton dinosaurs roamed the earth.

The NBA season, until such time as the Bulls can field a team. The NHL season, until such time as the Blackhawks can field a team. The MLB season, because the harebrained ideas they keep coming up with for starting it are more entertaining than any games would be.

The 2020 Summer Olympics, until 2021, to give Russian athletes more time to appeal their current suspensions and figure out how to hide their doping.

Being home all the time leads to looking in the refrigerator every ten minutes, which leads me to suggest that manufacturers create small doors within refrigerator doors, sort of like doggy doors, so that you don’t open the whole door so many times a day, thereby conserving the cold inside the appliance.

First thing every morning I eat an entire bulb of garlic, which not only lets me know whether I still have my sense of smell, but also helps keep others from invading my social distancing space.

When leaving my abode, I’m now wearing only one disposable glove in order to conserve them until I can go through my neighbors’ garbage to find more. The unintended consequence is that I have to resist the urge to moonwalk, which could be a dangerous form of exercise for a senior citizen.

I’ve invented a new game, where I stand at a corner that has a stop sign and wave cars to proceed, whereupon they inevitably wave back that I should cross, whereupon I reinstate my wave, sometimes adding a nod for effect. I repeat this dance over and over again with a car until the driver gets fed up, gives me the finger, and drives on. My current record is 23 times back and forth with a single driver. I’ve written Guinness World Records, but haven’t heard back.

Now that the CDC has recommended wearing masks, and a shortage of same still exists, people are getting very creative in making their own. I didn’t want to get too close to get a better look, but today I thought I saw someone wearing one that was either a strip steak or a dead pigeon.

Major league baseball, intent on having a season, has announced that catchers’ masks have been proven to block the passage of baseballs, and therefore should have no trouble stopping a one-micron virus.

I have heard rumors, not only of an in-the-works mask-making competition television show brought to you by the same people who produce Iron Chef, but also that there will be a flood of participants using mask-making as their talent in the next Miss America pageant.

With everyone wearing masks, serious discussions also are underway to have Halloween and Mardi Gras differentiate themselves by being the only two days each year when no one wears one.

On my daily, do-whatever-you-can-to-maintain-your-sanity walk today, I passed by Kiki’s Bistro, which brought back fond memories of the last time I ate there, with a group of friends, when, in the middle of our meal, the manager came over and asked us to quiet down, as there had been complaints from other tables that we were having too much fun, and added that he didn’t want to have to kick us out.

That memory further reminded me of the time a group of us went downtown, during winter break from college in 1969, to the now long-defunct Roosevelt Theater (1979 – so not our fault) to see the movie Marooned, of which Mad Magazine said, One astronaut sacrifices his life to escape the film critics.” Given reviews like that, it wasn’t surprising that the movie didn’t fare well, and that my friends and I were the only ones in the theater for the matinee we attended. And yet, an usher came by during the movie to tell us we were making too much noise and, yes, he didn’t want to have to kick us out.

As I haven’t been anywhere other than the grocery since March 10, the threats have stopped, for now, but I’ve noticed that I’ve been laughing out loud a lot at home, even though I’m alone, and, psychiatric concerns aside, I’m worried that I might have to ask myself to leave before I finish binge-watching Tiger King.

After finishing my A-list binge-watching, I had to decide what would be the least painful next way to pass the time in the loop we’re all stuck in, Groundhog Day revisited, where every day is the same, is the same, is the same.

I thought about logging on to an online dating service, which would be another place to ply my borderline creative writing skills, given that there would be no pressure to meet anyone in person, although anyone with whom you corresponded would have a lot of time to search the Internet to uncover all your lies, I mean half-truths, I mean exaggerations. It would be akin to a prisoner with a pen pal, who also is a prisoner, so there wouldn’t be any conjugal visits, though you might get a fruit cake with a face mask baked inside.

I decided to adopt a less drastic way to change things up. Every day, when getting on my computer for whatever important purpose, whether it be to get the latest update on Tom Hanks’s health or learn how to start a hydroponic garden in my bathroom so I don’t have to go to the grocery, I sit in a different chair. Once I spend a day in each of the chairs, I’ll start over, but first will rearrange the chairs, close my eyes and spin around, thereby sufficiently confusing myself so that each chair will now seem like a new and wonderful experience.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I’ve been doing all my personal business online for years anyway, so now I’m burning all my mail, just in case it’s contaminated. It’s not really a big deal, except for the catalogs (good thing Sears stopped sending their whopper out in 1993), then it starts getting a little smokey.

And now, for the first time in thirty years, I cracked open some eggs today. They were just as I remembered them, but not at all like they are when someone at the diner brings them to my table, fully executed. And I did it in one try. (In anticipation of this day, I’ve been working out – especially wrist exercises.) Tomorrow, I’m going to do it again and, if all goes well, move to step two, scrambling them. The next day I might get adventuresome and add cheese, if I’m feeling particularly empowered. Then at some point, I’ll actually eat them. But I haven’t investigated that part online yet and I don’t want to get it wrong.

After that, the next logical step, given the increasingly frightening thought of going to the grocery, will be to start a chicken farm on my balcony (as soon as I get the nerve to go out on it) – two hens should be enough. Research tells me that I can get 5-7 years of laying from each, which should get me well past the end of any further extensions of the shelter-in-place order (I hope).

“In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream” (tagline for the movie Alien, which, despite my having very little to do, I couldn’t watch all of the other day because it’s still too scary). Did anyone hear me scream this morning? I woke up without an Internet connection. You can survive weeks without food (and days without water), and, if you’re Sigourney Weaver, the most disgusting creatures imaginable over the course of several adventures (why did Ripley keep going back for more?), but in the coronavirus era, one day without the Internet may be enough to kill you.

Nevertheless, I remained relatively calm, taking deep breaths that served not only to help in that regard, but also now as part of a routine, daily health check. I unplugged everything I could find that might even remotely affect my connection – my router, my modem, my electric toothbrush (you never know) – and then, after counting to several hundred decimal places of pi (which I memorized a few days ago after running out of episodes of Picard to binge watch on CBS All Access), I rebooted everything but my galoshes.

All those years of clean living were not in naught as my tablet and laptop sprung to life, causing me to put away the bottle of pills I was going to swallow if virtually left home alone (by the way the bottle was empty and made of plastic, so I probably would have survived, especially with a little BBQ sauce on it).