Absurdity
Local Woman Has Not Intentionally Answered a Phone Call Since 2019
By BSN Staff, . BSN Network. Satire.
COLUMBUS, Ohio. Brenda Kowalski, a 34-year-old administrative coordinator and self-described "phone person," has not deliberately answered an incoming call since the third quarter of 2019, according to sources close to her, her phone carrier, and a growing coalition of people who just need a simple answer about whether she's coming to dinner.
The phenomenon was first documented by Kowalski's sister, Patrice, who noticed in late 2020 that every conversation she'd had with Brenda in the preceding twelve months had begun with the phrase "oh, wait, sorry, I literally just picked this up."
"She acts like the call arrived without warning," Patrice told BSN. "Like the phone rang and then something else happened and then somehow there was a voice in it. Every single time."
Kowalski has answered calls while removing her jacket, while attempting to silence the ringer, while fishing the phone out of a tote bag to check the time, and on at least three occasions, while placing the phone face-down on a table in a deliberate effort to not answer it. The screen, sources say, "just sort of cooperated with her elbow."
Caroline Marsh, a behavioral communications researcher at Ohio State who was contacted for comment and would like everyone to know she did not volunteer for this, said the pattern represents what she called "a complete collapse of the intentional answer gesture, in which the individual has outsourced the decision to pick up entirely to random physical contact with a glass rectangle."
"We don't technically have a clinical term for it," Marsh said. "But we're working on several."
Kowalski herself disputes the characterization, a position she shared during a phone call she answered by dropping her phone onto a hardwood floor and then stepping on the screen with a sock.
"I answer my phone," she said, audibly retrieving it from under a chair. "I just don't always know I'm doing it until it's already happening. That's still answering."
It is not clear that it is.
Her contacts have developed workarounds of varying sophistication. Her coworker Dennis calls twice in rapid succession and then waits, because the second call tends to catch Brenda mid-decline on the first. Her mother simply texts "CALL ME" and then immediately calls, timing the ring to coincide with what she estimates is Brenda's most distracted moment. Her boyfriend, Todd, has reportedly stopped trying and communicates exclusively through the apartment intercom, which Brenda also answers by accident but at a more acceptable rate.
The calls themselves, once accidentally connected, are described by recipients as normal. Brenda is articulate, engaged, and apparently unbothered by the fact that she arrived at the conversation through a system that relies entirely on gravity, friction, and bad reflexes.
"She'll talk for forty-five minutes," said her friend Gina. "She's great on the phone. She's just not great at getting on it. Or choosing to. Or any part before the talking."
Kowalski has a five-star rating on every communication platform that doesn't require her to initiate contact.
When asked if she intended to change her behavior, Kowalski said she was "open to it" and would "definitely think about it," at which point the call ended because she set her phone on the kitchen counter and it slid into the sink.
She has not called back.
The story we are making fun of: https://reductress.com/post/woman-only-ever-answers-phone-accidentally/