And with May 10-16 being National Stuttering Awareness Week, I figured I’d do my part to try and inform you on what it’s like to stutter.
For those of you who just went through prom week, do you recall how nervous you might’ve been when you asked someone to go to the prom with you? Your hands got sweaty, your heart felt like it was about to pound out of your chest, you secretly hoped something would come up that would keep you from having to speak at all? It was tough to do, right?
Well, that used to be me ordering a hamburger from the drive-through.
Most stutterers avoid the telephone like the plague. We don’t order food at restaurants, we’ll just point at what we’d like. We don’t ask someone for their phone number. Why bother? We’d rather get an incomplete grade if it meant we didn’t have to do a speech in front of the rest of the class. If we didn’t have to talk, that was a good thing. That all used to be me as well.
I’ve heard that stutterers tend to fall into a genetic pattern of sorts. They’re over six feet in height, left-handed, they have high IQs, they’re predominantly males and are incredibly good looking.
OK, I made the last one up. But I fit the other four categories. Stutterers’ brains tend to work in overdrive. We try to speak as fast as we think, and our vocal cords simply can’t keep up.
For me, I can talk to myself and not ever stutter. And after financing many a speech therapists’ beach house, I’ve learned that I can talk without stuttering in the safe confines of a speech therapy office. But get me out in public and it’s a different story. Throw in a deadline and a sense of urgency, send me to talk to someone I’ve never met before and ... well, like I said, it’s a very different story.
If you encounter someone who stutters, please be patient. Give them eye contact. Show them respect, don’t smirk, and just realize that they are there to talk to you. We’ll muddle through things, but just knowing that you’re not laughing at us really does help.
My last speech therapist, the late, great Carol Creager, made a breakthrough with me. She explained to me that we all have a message. “John, people want to hear what you have to say.” she said. “You matter.”
And I know that sounds pretty simple, but for a stutterer, at least for this one, I’ve always had my doubts. It was as if a light bulb went off inside my head. For whatever reason, I’d never seen my speaking to anyone in that way before. Embarrassed with my stuttering, I just figured I was someone who should sit quietly to the side and let the world speak for me.
In grade school, I’d stutter on every syllable of a word. It was embarrassing, so I’d choose to express myself by writing notes on paper. Carol Creager built my confidence and my speaking abilities to what they are today, and I refused to let stuttering keep me from doing what I loved.
That love of writing has blossomed into a journalism career. And being a stuttering journalist has led to some interesting interviews.
Then-Sen. John Glenn hung up on me once because I was stuttering so badly that he thought I was making fun of his wife, Annie, who stutters. I called him right back, told him not to hang up on me again, and explained to him that I stuttered and was just trying to do my job. We had a nice conversation after that.
Another time, then-Pittsburgh Steeler linebacker Kevin Greene began pretending to lunge at me while I was stuttering through my questions in the Steeler locker room. I got mad, told him I wasn’t scared of him (I really was!), and that I was stuttering. He apologized, and gave me a long interview.
My toughest interview so far was probably 15 years ago when I interviewed Japanese race driver Hiro Matsushita for a Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course race program feature article. I stuttered, Hiro spoke a very limited amount of English and we were standing next to his Indy car and the crew was tuning the car’s engine.
I’d stutter, the crew would rev the engine in mid-sentence, Hiro would look at me with a confused look on his face, I’d try again, the engine would rev ... Hiro would answer, more engine, I’d look confused, he’d try again. It was a bad Abbott & Costello routine gone awry, and this went on and on until we finally began laughing at our predicament and resorted to hand signals.
But I didn’t stutter once in the article.
If this long-winded article has taught you anything, I hope it is this: Give stutterers your time and patience. Who knows? You just might like what they have to say.
John Bombatch is a sports writer for the JournalNews.