When I was a little boy, I had a terrible stutter. My family as a whole was going through a very rough patch and I reacted by developing a stammer and then was so embarrassed by that, I quit talking, pretty much. By the time I entered adolescence, it had faded away, thank god. Oddly enough, I once mentioned this to my mother and she was amazed to hear that I had stuttered. She said she had never, not once, heard me have a hard time starting a sentence or a word. Were we in parallel universes? I don't know.
I'm still so self-conscious about the possibility of stuttering, I find myself rehearsing what I'm going to order at length the whole time I'm standing in line, just to make sure the words actually get out. The few times since I've grown up that I've had to deal with it has always been because of stress.
So tonight I met a new guy who is a volunteer teacher here for me. We had only communicated by email before and I had no idea that he had a bad stammer of his own. As I was making small talk with him, I realized my own stutter was coming back. Sympathy stuttering, who knew? I was horrified that he would think I was mocking him, I knew couldn't make myself stop (it doesn't work like that) and so I took the coward's way out: I started coughing and pointed towards the general area of the restroom, rushed off and am now hiding at my desk where I will not have to deal with him again, hopefully. Also, hopefully, he'll just think I have consumption and not that I'm a rude jerk.
Life is so complicated.
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First of all, mothers *do* live in a parallel universe.
ReplyDeleteAnd I know I find myself instinctively imitating others. It's only natural.
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