“Phone calls with strangers can reintroduce random connections into our locked-down lives, and be a balm for loneliness and grief.”

“Danielle Baskin, who founded QuarantineChat with Max Hawkins. The app randomly connects people around the world. Baskin said she hoped the calls would ‘kindle unexpected friendships.'” – Credit … via QuarantineChat

by Devi Lockwood

“Like many people, my life in quarantine has included doses of grief, solitude and unpredictability. In early April, a friend recommended that I try QuarantineChat, an app that connects two people who don’t know each other for a phone call. ‘You’ll love it,’ she said.

“I pocketed the suggestion, and remembered it when my grandmother’s health started to deteriorate. If there was a time to connect with strangers — to startle my life out of its humdrum at-home routine, this was it. I hoped, if only for a few minutes, to be reminded of life in other corners. I wanted to remember what it felt like to be curious about someone else — to meet them for the first time.

“My first match, on May 6, was with a man in Bangkok. He told me about his haircut. ‘My barber was wearing a mask and a face shield,’ he said. ‘It was really weird, but I felt so good.’ He lost his job as a copywriter last month. I exhaled and told him about cutting my own hair with the scissors on a Swiss Army knife, a habit I’d picked up years before while traveling on my bicycle. It felt good to laugh and think about other places. I didn’t have to make eye contact or worry about what I looked like.”

Click here to read this article in its entirety at The New York Times.