2M students answered the New York Times question:
What story does this image inspire for you?
Use your imagination to write the opening of a short story or a poem inspired by this illustration — or tell us about a memory from your own life that this picture makes you think of.
Hi! How are you doing? I know you are so busy…
But I’m missing your voice, may you please talk to me?
The time that has passed since looks like eternity.
Could we stop watching the clock and chat endlessly?
All I need is a never-ending dialog
To help me light up the way in this blinding fog.
You know, I am really afraid to disturb you
So please, don’t lie to me and tell me if I do.
Let’s blabber, let’s blather, let’s prattle all day long.
The more we socialize and the more we get strong.
Tell me a story, anything, but please don’t leave.
Perhaps with patience, I could make you talkative.
The sound of our two voices makes me daydream
No matter if we must whisper or if we scream,
We while away the time ‘till one of us gets tired,
Fill in the blanks even when we are uninspired.
Let is trust each other and share our secrets.
We will laugh so loud that you won’t ever regret
To have answered my call, so early today.
I won’t even have to find a way to make you stay.
I confess to being a boring chatterbox.
The more a girl loves gossiping, the more she talks
For hours on end, and she can make you waste time.
But after all, speaking too much is not a crime.
It makes me feel so good to speak with my soulmate
But before we notice it, it’s getting quite late.
We spent the whole day on the phone, thank you so much.
It was perfect even if I still miss your touch.
Marianne
We are in the middle of spring,
The sun shines but no one goes out…
Suddenly my phone starts to ring
I answer as there is no doubt.
Now starts my amazing journey,
It is a long trip with my friend,
I’m sure I’ll spend no money.
No one can tell when it will end.
We just talk, again and again,
But sometimes we feel a big pain
We do miss each other a lot…
The phone, the only link we’ve got,
Isn’t enough for us, indeed,
We just have to wait to be freed…
Alexandre
At the beginning of the quarantine, I was chatting with my two best friends after a while.
We decided to start a FaceTime session to spend our time together because we hadn’t seen each other since before Christmas and most of all we called to kill our boredom.
We first started talking about what we had done since the end of February and slowly gossiping about some of our friends. Also, we used to plan our future basically we dream about our future. We like debating about different topics like this quarantine. This time we talked for 10 hours in a row because we had too many things to talk about. Sometimes we call each other to tell something and after a while, we just stay on the phone and not say anything, we usually stayed on the phone late at night so it happened to fall asleep on phone. But we like knowing that we are together no matter what or no matter the times we are always here for each other.
Raluca
It reminds me of a day when I was sick when I was younger.
I was stuck in my bed and had nothing to do. It was then that my grandmother called me on the landline phone.
At first, I thought that the call would not be very long because she would surely have more important things to do. But she told me that there was a storm outside and that she had nothing planned. It was then that I realized that the phone call was going to last a long time.
I don’t think I’ve ever spent as much time on the phone as I did that day. My grandmother told me anecdotes from her neighborhood and told me the news of the week.
As I was smaller, I did not understand anything of what she said to me but I dared not tell her so as not to offend her. So I stayed on the phone with my grandmother for at least three hours and to end this endless discussion I had to make her believe that I was tired and that I had to rest.
Since that day, I dread the moments when my grandmother calls and therefore, I try to cut the conversation short. I prefer to send her messages to hear from her.
Adrien
This picture reminds when I call Nathanaëlle or she calls me. 1
Normally I hate to call people because I’m very shy on the phone. So it is difficult to have a conversation. But Nathanaëlle is the only person with whom I can talk for hours on end. We can blabber about gossips, the trips, the future or Parisian outings. Our conversations can last from 10 minutes to two and a half hours.
We do a lot of activities with Nathanaëlle when we talk together with our phones. We can do sports or shop. For the shopping, she describes the clothes that she wears. That is very cool! We’ve never been bored.
One day I was in the south of France for my birthday. I was happy, but I wanted to celebrate with her and my friends. And in the evening, she called me and she invited all of my friends to join the chat. That was the best call of my life. It was from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. It was like a pajama party. We talked 2 for a long time and we each ate a cake and I blew out my candles on the phone. Before the end, one of my friends told us a horror story.
After it was over, Nathanaëlle, called me back and we talked 2 about anything and everything. That night I didn’t sleep 2 because we are regular chatterboxes.
For example, last week I forgot 2 to eat because I was talking with her. It was after the call that I realized I hadn’t eaten. So, I had lunch/ I ended up lunching 2 at 3 p.m.
Amélia
Dusk till Dawn
We are starting in the afternoon
I pick up the phone to talk for hours on end
Until I realize that now I can see the moon
It’s 3 am, the sun went to sleep
We have been talking all night
And time passes by so fast to build castles out of dreams
From the wall to the floor
I lie down with your voice in my ears
You are the medicine to my disease
The water to my thirst
Like the sun you brighten my life
And I don’t think you are what I deserve
I need to confess my sins
The ones of living without you
A thousand miles is pretty far
And I don’t even have a car
But I will find a way to get to you
And when you hang up it seems too soon
For the world to stop
And my only friend left is the lonely moon
Anissa
John’s alone in his own home waiting for a call from his own phone.
He doesn’t know what his iphone rings like, a xylophone, a saxophone…
It’s ringing, he picks up the phone and with his head up he starts talking. It’s his boss who thinks he’s the king.
This time it’s over John is determined to end it, he intends to go beyond the limits.
He activates, takes off his headphones, little by little his sentences grow in his mouth, this time his words are sharp as a knife.
He calls him a tyrant and a despot; he gives him no respite.
And then he wakes up to the monotone ringing of his phone…
It was just a bad dream, which means he’s still weak.
Finally, he spent his daydreaming and never had the strength to pick up his phone.
Arthur
One day, when I was on vacation with my brother at my grandparents’ house, my grandfather asked me and my brother to ask one of his friends to come and play a game – I can’t remember what game.
So, we went to his house, he lived in the house next to ours. This friend invited us to sit down and drink something. And he began an ENDLESS conversation with us. He told us about his childhood, about the war, about his parents, in short, he told us all his life.
Sometimes, during his speech I was absent, I was dreaming and praying to get out of this hell. In the end our worried grandfather joined us and we could go home.
It was one of these abominable experiences that stick to your memory forever.
Axel
A teenager called his grandmother
He wanted to hear from her
He thought it would go fast
But it took a few hours
His grandmother was bored that day
And he had a lot of homework
He told her “Today I have a lot of work”
She told him « Today nobody called me”
At that moment, he realized
That it would be very long
He knew that when she said so
It meant that she had a lot of things to tell
He called her about 4 p.m.
He hung up around 2 a.m.
He skipped a meal and his evening
But he learned everything about Grandma’s week
Côme
Since your absence
I am on standby.
As time goes by
Nothing makes sense.
When you set out
To call at last!
Boredom dies out,
Time goes so fast!
Now how to show
loneliness
While your kindness
Burns all sorrow?
I cling to you,
And let time fill
Me up with you
And time stands still
Eva C
My cousin and I get along very well. Unfortunately, we live literally worlds apart. We are used to talking about anything and everything.
One day, she called me with great news: her father had agreed to let her come over for a week with us!
We hadn’t seen each other for almost a year and she had never been to Paris. That’s why we were so excited about the news.
When we talk, she and I are real chatterboxes… impossible to stop. So, we kept chatting all afternoon.
We talked about all the activities we were going to do together, all the things she had to see in Paris.
Finally, we talked for hours. It was our parents who had to end our exciting discussion by showing us the time… eight o’clock.
It was actually time to hang up.
Eva V
A fond memory
Thisillustrationremindsmealotofamoment.Thatwastwoyearsago, I didn’t have a phone yet. On Christmas Eve I got my first phone, I was so happy.
I had twocousinsinBrittany and I scarcely had any opportunity to talk to them.
It was then that the idea dawned on me to call them to apprise them of the big news. We talked for hours, about everything and nothing. It was a really nice time since I hadn’t spoken to them for months or even years.
GASPARD
Confinement verdict
It’s been a long time that Mustafa
Has been seating on his sofa,
Bored with Covid
He called his friend David.
Telling each other their lives
They didn’t see the passing Time,
Hearing the scream of his wife
He came to see if she was fine.
The wife told him that she was upset,
Seeing Mustafa on the phone
From sunrise to sunset
And that she would be better on her own.
Ivan
my emptiness without you
Alone in my apartment,
Alone since you flew away,
Days pass alike
As if my life was on break.
This wretched virus attacked you,
Obviously, I will avenge you.
I keep listening,
Loop your messages,
Because I only have one fear,
To forget you forever.
I wish above all,
To wake up from this nightmare,
And restore meaning in my life.
Imagine my life without you,
It’s not even possible,
So, I believe that all of this
Will end when I wake up.
Léa
When I see these images, they remind me of my long conversations with my best friends gossiping for hours.
These are the best calls I’ve ever had because no one can hear us.
That may only be once or twice a month but these calls are like a ritual for us.
I see myself so much more now in these images because first we are in quarantine so I can’t see my friends anymore but also in addition/ on top of that we are not in the same high school so I am constantly looking forward every time to calling my best friend to tell her the latest news.
But these photos remind me too when I spent hours on the phone arguing with someone I didn’t like.
I love talking on the phone because I appreciate the sound of the human voice but I don’t like texting because the person can’t know with what intonation we are delivering the message.
Lila
How bored I was during the containment period imposed by the coronavirus!
Isolated at home I felt the urge to communicate. I spent all my time on the phone with my friends, we talked for hours on end, we made up stories. In the morning I got news from one of my relatives, after lunch I called another one, and I did this all day long … even part of the night. I phoned in every possible position: sitting, standing, doing the candlestick… in short, I was doing sports at the same time! I ended up falling asleep on the phone in the middle of the night! I couldn’t wait to finally get out to talk to my friends for real!
Lisa
When I was in the tower
When I was in the tower,
I took a shower.
Right after, my phone rang
But I was sleeping!
How annoying!…
I picked up the phone
The guys wanted to know
If I was in Eurozone
I said no, he insisted
I said him s…t
He said you’re very rude!
I said I know I love the rule!
But in the sky, I saw the sunset
But it’s time for my Sky!
And the guy was speaking and speaking,
And I took an ice-pick,
And I smashed my phone!
The guy stopped speaking.
And now I’m alone…
LouisB
From dawn to dusk, a man and a woman call each other day and night,
wanting to get to know each other despite the distance and confinement.
Whether standing, sitting, lying, always on the phone,
While they should be sleeping, they are still on the phone.
Sometimes they hang up to call a loved one, then come back right after.
They eat as quickly as possible and then stay all afternoon and all night.
Even when they sleep, they stay in touch. A beautiful story that may be going on for a long time.
Louis G
You keep me busy during this quarantine,
Even if I am stuck home-alone,
On the cell phone, we’re non-stop speaking,
It’s like being with You all day long.
Gossiping, joking, laughing and crying,
I’m losing track of time when my call’s on.
From morning to evening and evening to morning,
Up to the half-moon’s apparition,
From sunrise to sunset meandering,
It made me want to write a song.
Marie
To be honest, these pictures remind me of my daily life, I can relate to these photos because talking on the phone for hours with my friends or family is something I do very often, even more with this quarantine.
These photos remind me of every moment I spend on the phone talking for hours to my friends when I explain my life to them where I confide and they confide in me. We do not just gossip about people or talk about others. We also talk about how we feel.
These photos remind me more particularly of the times when I spoke openly about my problems, about what I felt to my family.
These mages bring back fond memories, but not just that, strangely, they also remind me of all the times I used to fight with my friends and have our stories settled on the phone for hours. Sometimes it’s important to talk to people about how you feel to feel better, so these photos remind me of all the times I spoke on the phone with my loved ones.
Mona
I remember one day when I was fourteen years old, my parents left me alone at home. They had to go to visit my grandma who was ill. So, I decided to call my best friend Raphael. It was the most endless conversation I had in my entire life.
Let me explain, we started exchanging views about our favorite movie we had seen together. We argued a lot about the positive and the negative points of the film. We started at 10 am until 11 am. Then, I felt hungry, I ate my spaghetti while speaking to Raphael. Then, we started playing while chatting and this took us a very very long time. At 8 pm my parents came back and they were very angry because they had tried to call me and of course my phone was busy and they got the voicemail all day.
Of course, I was punished, my parents confiscated my phone for one month.
To conclude, what I remembered from that day, was that my ear hurt a lot.
Mounir
Do you know this feeling during adolescence when your friends become your priority? They know your whole life and they become your confidants, your allies or your psychologists/ therapists/ shrinks…
In situations when you don’t know what to think in the midst of all your problems, you feel the urge to communicate and you need to confess things. Welcome to my middle school teenage life!
I was 13 and the fashion was sports clothes or jeans with holes, Nike shoes, and high ponytails. But personally, I had little interest in that stuff. As in all good films for teenagers I was rather the good simple pupil girl/ = a goody-two-shoes. Fortunately, I maintained a certain level of sociability thanks to my friends who forced me to go out. We all knew each other since elementary school, so we were clearly inseparable. We all changed without exceptions but not to the point of dressing in Nike!
But everything changed with my 8th grade. So far, I had always had my best friend in my class. You will tell me “wow, you were lucky because since 1st grade it’s been a lot of years” and I will answer “yes, so now it was a leap into the unknown/ I was off the deep end!” And the worst thing in this tragedy was that she sometimes was in the class before me. Our schedules were radically different! We saw each other very little during the day, and therefore we hardly communicated anymore. Our group of friends had also been divided between classes, and each of us had new friends – yes, even I! But we also spent a lot of time with our activities.
To solve this communication problem, we saw each other after 6 p.m. until dinner time and we would swing in a park near our home. It was also a way to escape our family problems because she and I were well-provided for/ had plenty on our plates in this concern. But around the middle of the year, I moved out to live in a house and it took me away from my city.
This is when the phone becomes an essential element to preserve our mental health as it allows us to communicate (too much). I finished classes around 5 p.m. and it would take me 30 minutes to get home. When I got home I talked to my mom a bit and called my best friend. But we had changed and our lives also became more interesting, gossips, NETFLIX etc… The fact that we had met new people also played a role. She told me her stories with her crushes and we talked on the phone until at least 9 p.m…. And even if I thought I knew her by heart I didn’t really understand what she felt.
But around 11 p.m. on Friday, I had been on the phone with her since at least 4 p.m. when I received a lot of messages … but it wasn’t my birthday… since these messages, she became my psychologist. It was such a hard life… Now I am in my sophomore year, we keep calling each other but we have to organize ourselves better because the amount of work is no longer the same. We can’t continue to talk for hours on end… My 8th grade was my best year. But I speak for myself, because I’m not sure that our parents were happy to have to change our phone plans.
Nathanaëlle
At the beginning of the quarantine, I was chatting with my two best friends after a while.
We decided to start a FaceTime session to spend our time together because we hadn’t seen each other since before Christmas and most of all we called to kill our boredom.
We first started talking about what we had done since the end of February and slowly gossiping about some of our friends. Also, we used to plan our future basically we dream about our future. We like debating about different topics like this quarantine. This time we talked for 10 hours in a row because we had too many things to talk about. Sometimes we call each other to tell something and after a while, we just stay on the phone and not say anything, we usually stayed on phone late at night so it happened to fall asleep on phone. But we like knowing that we are together no matter what or no matter the times we are always here for each other.
Raluca
Call someone when you feel lonely
Only one person can make you feel better
Nothing is better than talking for hours on end
Very good if you’re a chatterbox
Especially if you find that person who will listen to you
Reveal your trouble, your pain, but also your joy
Sometimes try to listen back to improve yourself
And at night or in the daytime, even if you have to fall asleep on the phone
Try to make the right choice and keep only good persons around you
It’s difficult to make decisions so find someone who will stand by you
Or your problems will never stop
Never forget that you must listen to yourself but confessing to the good person can help
Romain
The story of a long night
Two years ago, a very hot summer day. Night fell and I did not feel tired, for more than an hour I tried to listen to music. It didn’t work, so I tried watching a series. But with such heat, and the fact that I was not tired made it impossible to fall asleep. So I looked for ideas, and the only one that came to my mind was to call my best friend. I immediately called him, and he answered me. He explained to me that he was in the same situation, so we talked all night.
Timothé
How do you feel on this Monday morning?
I heard you but can’t answer your calling
Just know that we’ll catch it all up later
At sunset on the beach around a bonfire
Singing our memories breathing away
Laughing at our mistakes, as stowaways
We’ll run in the streets, just insane
Sure, we won’t have to take the blame
Talk about it even after dark
Almost made us forget we were apart
Andréa
This image reminds me of an anecdote that took place during the summer holidays.
I was talking to a girl I liked physically and loved talking to. We really talked a lot on social networks because we were very far from each other. We spent our days and nights on our phones calling each other and telling each other our lives.
In the daytime we told each other everything we did, very late at night we kept talking until the fatigue stopped us.
At the end of each discussion, I was waiting for the next call. By discussing so much, we found similarities and jokes between us.
Walid
Dear phone,
You who occupy my days,
You who allow me to stay in communication with the world,
With my friends, my family, and all the people I love.
Thanks to you I can gossip and chat endlessly,
Thanks to you I can’t get bored,
With all the applications you provide me with.
For all that, thank you.
Ninon
These images remind me of the summer vacation spent in the
countryside far from everything including my friends.
This is why some days with my friend Camille, we called and we talked for hours on end.
The discussions covered on a lot of subjects – what we had eaten, the current weather, what we had done the other days or even if we had tanned a lot.
My friend Camille chatted endlessly and she confessed me her troubled love stories. She admitted that she was very indecisive about boys and spent time telling me about her problems one by one. I listened carefully while making castles in the air because I couldn’t bear to stay in one position. We talked until the sun went down and even longer. We exchanged views, I gave her advice.
Our discussions were endless but we did not see the time passing. We talked to each other looking at the starry sky until we got tired.
Léina
Confined
Nights turn to days
These days that all look alike
And I’m losing track of time
So much so that I no longer know the difference
My days spent talking to you
Or my nights spent listening to you
And I’m telling you the story of my life
My life that seems insane
In this period when I feel disoriented
Cause time flies so quickly talking to you
And I miss being by your side
Eva Vr
