So, I had a weird thing happen to me last Sunday.
Sitting in the post-game press conference after our women's basketball team took out Clemson, I had been asking a few questions to gather quotes for upcoming stories. I was able to ask the first two questions relatively smoothly. On the third, however, I ended up stuttering and stammering for 10-15 seconds, before being told to stop and start over from the beginning.
The fact that I stuttered so badly wasn't the weird thing, though. Anyone who knows me personally knows that I have a somewhat obvious speech impediment, and although it is unusual for me to stutter repeatedly on back-to-back words, it happens frequently enough. No, the weird part was how much I thought about it afterwards.
The actual experience of stuttering isn't really that much fun, of course. As my question dragged on and on, snickers start emerging from most of the fellow press writers, most of whom I'm sure don't realize that I have an actual speech impediment.
Coach Goestenkors and the players are much more sympathetic, having known me for a couple of years now, so they try to nod and politely ask me to try again. The second attempt goes well, and so I gather my things and head out. The initial few steps back to my car are frustrating, though.
The funny thing is that I'm never embarrassed purely because of my speech. What gets me is that most people assume further connotations from my stutter that I dislike immensely, such as that I'm some rookie reporter caught up in the moment, that I get nervous in front of crowds or simply that I'm just a mild, meek guy who loses confidence easily.
As I walked past K-Ville I thought about the fact that people have been ridiculing me about my stuttering for my entire life and that, honestly, most times I really could care less. The insults were incessant when I was a kid, and, as I've gotten older, the digs are usually said out of earshot, so I hear them mostly second-hand now.
But as I walked I still felt this tinge of bitterness. After all, no one likes to be laughed at, especially for something they mostly can't control. I've had thoughts like those before, though.
What struck most is a question I wondered aloud to myself. Am I actually disabled? Maybe it's just me, but I found it really foreign to look at myself that way. Ironically, perfectionist that I am, I think about most of my flaws constantly.
I worry a lot about being a stronger, better individual. I reflect, sometimes for long hours, on the best friends and girlfriends that I no longer have, wondering what mistakes in the relationship were mine and what I can do to improve. And, vain a------ that I am, I'm incessantly looking in the mirror and analyzing my body.
So I do worry about my imperfections quite often. I just don't ever think about my speech impediment.
That struck me as very odd. As I sat in my car, I wondered why that was.
I found it difficult to really put my speech impediment in perspective. I tried to think if I'd ever met a person who talked like me, and I realized that I really hadn't. I've known a couple people with lisps, and I've met lots of kids with various speech difficulties. But at least from anecdotal experience, I've met extremely few adults with speech impediments, and none with my sort of stutter.
But I realized that I honestly could care less what kind of statistic I was. What were my odds? 1:1,000? 1:10,000?
I rarely think about my stutter like that. I've always thought of my speech impediment as some mild obstruction, nothing more. It hampers me sometimes, sure, but not too often. That's the way I've of approached it.
On Sunday, though, I let myself wallow a little bit. I wasn't really angry, but I felt... fatigued. I just kind of sat down and all of sudden grew really tired of stuttering.
It just kind of hit me in waves. I felt so tired of having reporters, coaches and players laugh and snicker. I felt so tired of going up to talk to girl, only to have her give me this look of disdain once I opened my mouth. I felt tired of never being able to act in a real play since I was in elementary school. I felt so tired of realizing that the average person speaks with few cares in the world. They just open their mouths and out comes sound, pretty much as they'd like it to. They never have to feel their facial muscles literally clamp up and refuse to work properly.
"Dude," I thought to myself. "Stuttering blows."
At the same time, though, I had a kind of surreal chuckle. Fun as it was to complain a little bit, I realized that I've never really fantasized about speaking like a normal person. I've gone through multiple speech therapists with various methods and teachings, but none of them showed me a Rosetta Stone to carefree speech.
Plus, my stutter has always been relatively mild. My parents told me that as a kid, and I believed them. Others have told me that since. So, I've always just talked, and as anyone can attest to, I talk a lot.
Actually, I never shut up, really. I've always had so much to say, and I've always been intent on saying it. Sure, I would love to talk like James Bond or Tom Cruise, somebody suave and effortlessly effective. But, so what?
Although I guess theoretically I live in a world where 99 percent of people do something that I can't, I could care less. So, I asked myself Sunday night: Am I disabled? What a dumb question, I thought.
Nick Christie is a Trinity senior and associate sports editor of The Chronicle.
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