KAREN HAS A COUSIN. Her name is Kathy, and she works as a pre-natal ultrasound technician at my hospital, and she is CHATTY AS THE DAYS ARE ENDLESS AND NO LONGER MARKED BY EVENTS. Take yesterday, I was being gelled and probed, so that the tech might measure our kid’s internal organs, so you know, very low stakes:

KATHY: The virus isn’t going anywhere because no one else listening to anyone because it’s all politics now, it’s all politics. No one is listening to the truth, so yeah, it’s never going away. I lived through Aids, and the Rodney King riots.

ME:…Okay! Is the baby okay?

KATHY: What do you for a living?

ME: I’m a TV writer.

KATHY:Okay, see, it’s your fault. It’s the media’s fault. You guys aren’t telling the TRUTH about history.

ME:….Okay but….How’s he looking?

KATHY: I invented a way to tell if the baby is blind, in utero!

ME:….IS HE BLIND?

KATHY: I COME FROM IRISH IMMIGRANTS