A Fffailure To Cccommunicate

Some of the most uncomfortable moments for me is when I see a person struggle with stuttering. Most people don't know the horror if they themselves haven't been stuck in a verbal loop with onlookers waiting for a complete sentence to make it out of their mouths. I was a stutterer for many years, as was my dad's brother, Uncle Jack. I guess we never fully heal from the social scourge of stuttering. We are like alcoholics: recovering on a daily basis.

Mel Tillis is known for his stuttering as much as his singing. Moses was said to have had the defect, and relied on his brother Aaron to communicate for him. Aesop (of fable fame), the emperor Claudius, and the orator Demosthenes, were all strapped with the stutter affliction. Most children who stutter usually outgrow it by their teens. Some, however, carry the speech defect into adulthood.

Stutterers, because they are verbally quick on their feet, are rather resourceful. Their survival depends on finding other ways to say the same thing to avoid the dreaded stammer. Consonants, those pesky varmints, are what we stutterers avoid at all costs--anything in the language that stops the flow such as the T, D, P and K sounds-- serious sentence killers! Vowels are our friend. If we had only vowels in the English language there would be no stuttering.

Some say singing your words is a cure. That can be true. But have you ever experienced someone singing their sentences to you in a conversation? That's just weird and probably more awkward than stuttering. The biggest help for me is to just slow down. If we record ourselves talking slow enough to get the words out, and listen back, it sounds fairly normal. Many times we think that people are less patient in conversation than they actually are. If I take a deep breath, relax, and form each syllable, usually I can speak as though no verbal challenge even existed. Isn't it ironic that all the famous folks aforementioned were(or are) renowned communicators?

The next time you experience a stutterer, just be patient and don't try to finish their sentences for them. They might be only a consonant away from uttering, "Hey, look out for that poisonous snake!"