Pandemic Friendship When There’s Nothing to Say

Jenée Desmond-Harris
3 min readDec 7, 2020

I didn’t talk on the phone for a month. This has to change.

A fake “look at each other and laugh” pose with my real friends (credit: Anna Marks Photography)

This week, I called my friend Hana to say happy birthday and talked for about 40 minutes. The next day, I called my friend Katherine to check on her father’s health.

These conversations sound unremarkable, and they were. But after each one, I was on Cloud 9. Delighted. Giddy. I felt like myself! And I know why: Before this week, I hadn’t talked on the phone to a friend in at least a month.

I realized it when my colleague Tim Herrera tweeted this, and I could relate.

I can see exactly how this happened: I’ve never been a big phone person, but in the past, it didn’t matter. Events kept friendships going, and put me face-to-face with the people I cared about on a regular basis. Happy hours and nights out…

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Jenée Desmond-Harris

Writer & editor currently at @nytopinion. Before this: @jskstanford @voxdotcom, @theroot, @harvard_law, @howardu