Getting a Hangover at a Kid's Birthday
I can explain.
Riding Those Neural Pathways
I called this venture Digressions and Dysfluencies because — well, one, I like alliteration — but mostly I thought I would sprinkle in stories about my experiences as someone who stutters, amongst my other ramblings about current events and whatnot. But more than two years in at this point, I haven’t really done that. Turns out, I don’t have a ton of experiences relating to my speech these days. Which is weird because I experience stuttering, to some extent or another, every time I speak.
The most recent “experience,” if you can even call it that, was last weekend at a birthday party for a kid in my older daughter’s daycare class. There was a group of dads standing around making that awkward Kid’s Birthday Party small talk, which is usually my nightmare, but there were enough people there that I could use my sneakiest fluency trick — what we in the business call “fluent asides.” (Ha, “the business.”)
Stuttering is such a weird disorder. No two people who stutter will stutter the same way. We all have our individual quirks, challenges with different sounds, varying levels of fear in various situations, etc. The best that I can explain it is that there are different neural pathways that our brains can send verbal information through, and these different neural pathways can be more cluttered and challenging depending on the type of communication for which they are used. It’s not as simple as “speaking” vs. “not speaking.” When I’m alone, for example, I can [frustratingly] say pretty much whatever I want with barely a hint of tension or dysfluency. That’s one neural pathway, and for me it’s pretty clear. But you add a single person within earshot who might be listening, and my brain uses a completely different neural pathway. Speaking on the phone is a different neural pathway than speaking in person, speaking to a group is a different pathway than speaking to one person, conveying hard data like a phone number or address is a different pathway than conveying an opinion, singing is a different pathway than speaking, even asking a question is a different pathway than making a statement. Communication is a complex neurological process, and different people, particularly people who stutter, navigate these pathways differently.
One of my quirks — these “fluent asides” — is that I can be almost completely fluent when speaking to a group as long as I don’t feel like the center of attention. It’s useful for me, because I’m a fairly extroverted and social person but I’ve felt sort of forced into introvert-ism by my general inability to speak extemporaneously, and this quirk allows me to roughly approximate being an extrovert.
So one of the other dads at this party was talking about playing with his son and how toys these days break so easily, meanwhile he still has toys from his childhood that are basically indestructible, and thankfully his mom had kept them all and sent them to him. And that’s when I saw my opening — I could totally relate. My parents kept all of my old toys, too. They’ve been played with by every cousin younger than I am for the last 30 years. And so my brain set out to relay all of that information down the “fluent aside” pathway.
“Ah, yeah, my parents did the same thing, they—” I started. But then I noticed people looking at me. Using a fluent aside is sort of like Wile E. Coyote defying gravity — it works as long as no one draws attention to it. But as soon as I noticed someone paying attention, my brain jumped the tracks off of the “fluent aside” pathway and onto the “addressing a group of strangers” pathway, which is a much bumpier, nigh impassable, route. So that “k” in “keep” that I was trying to say morphed into a silent block. The back of my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth and thus no air is moving through my vocal folds. No air means no sound, so while I’m in fact still trying to speak, to the ears of this group of listeners I’ve simply stopped talking midsentence. I try to move off the “k” to the “ee” a couple of times, but the block is being stubborn. It’s been maybe 2-3 seconds of real time, but it already feels like an eternity when the other dad fills in “…kept all of your old toys?”
“Oh, ha, yeah…” I kind of sheepishly acknowledge, as I clear my throat to give some indication that maybe there was some cause for that communication breakdown than my own brain being uncooperative.
Then a few minutes later, another dad was talking about how he’s pretty sure all of his neighbors are clandestine operatives, but they all have really bland cover stories like “I work in IT.” And then another dad chimes in like “…or ‘I work for the State Department.’” So then I chimed in, all fluent aside-like, with “Oh, that’s funny, because I actually work in IT for the State Department, but like, for real…” At which point the other dad looks over to me and says “Oh, what kind of work do you do?”
“You fool,” my brain admonishes me. “Have we learned nothing from five minutes ago? What are you doing?” So, like some kind of idiot, I try to answer his question.
“I, uh, I work with uh, like embassies, and uh…consulates, and we install cameras and stuff.” That’s not even a remotely complete explanation of what I do, but it was all that I could triage down that particular pathway. And of course he asks a follow up, “Oh wow, so do you get to travel?” And I say “Oh, no, I don’t but the rest of my team does…” There’s a reason for that as well, but not one I can casually explain.
So then I’m left wondering what exactly everyone is making of that little spectacle. Do they think I was being coyly secretive because I actually am a clandestine operative? Or do they think I’m the weird dad who speaks awkwardly? I’ve spent a lot of therapy trying to not care what others might be thinking, and/or accepting that they’re going to think whatever they think and there’s nothing I can do about it, and — perhaps most likely — realizing that they’re not thinking about me at all. But it nevertheless gives me what I call the “vulnerability hangover.” Any time I let someone — particularly strangers or acquaintances — see me stutter, however camouflaged, I get incredibly self conscious after the fact. Even if it seemed like a good idea at the time. I turn into an emotional college girl who can’t hold her booze, drunkenly asking her friends “Do you guys think I’m weird? Do you still like me?”
Whatever part of my brain it is that does that, I think of it like my appendix. It’s a vestigial mechanism from a previous era that doesn’t seem to serve any current purpose, and I only notice it when it gets inflamed. And when it’s inflamed it can actually be pretty harmful. The problem is I can’t go into my brain and scalpel out the self-consciousness. The only way out is through.
We’re Not Related, but We’re Family
What got me thinking about this was a new book by an editor at The Atlantic named John Hendrickson. I first became aware of John back in 2019 when he wrote the seminal piece of my favorite type of niche journalism — Joe Biden’s struggles with stuttering. The Atlantic excerpted part of John’s book — I call him John because we’ve emailed a couple of times and as far as I’m concerned we’re buddies now — and it brought up a lot of old memories.
When I was first diagnosed with a speech impediment, in the fall of 1992, stuttering was viewed as something to be fixed, solved, cured—and fast!—before it’s too late. You don’t want your kid to grow up to be a stutterer. […]
The average speech-language pathologist, or SLP, is taught to treat multiple disorders, including enunciation challenges (think of someone who has trouble articulating an R sound) and swallowing issues. Yet many therapists are ill-equipped to handle a multilayered problem like stuttering. Of the roughly 150,000 SLPs in the United States, fewer than 150 are board-certified stuttering specialists. Even today, the medical community is divided over how to effectively help a person with a stutter. Many teachers don’t know how to deal with it either. It’s lonely. We’re told that 3 million Americans talk this way, but it doesn’t feel that common. You may have a sister or dad or grandparent who stutters, but in most cases, there’s only one kid in class who stutters: you. […]
Kids stare as I stand to leave class. I walk down two flights of slate steps, turn the corner, and enter the little room. Everything in the little room is little: little table, little chair, little bookshelf. The decor is infantilizing. […]
There’s a stack of books on the table that are meant for people younger than me. Most sentences in these books are composed of one-syllable words. The vowels on the page are emphasized—underlined or in bold—a visual cue for me to stretch out that sound. Today we’re going to practice reading “car as “cuuuuhhhh-aaarrr.” This is embarrassing. I know what car sounds like. I know how other people say car. Doing this exercise makes me feel like an idiot; not only do I have trouble speaking, but now it seems like I can’t read. Every time I block on the C, I sense a pinch of frustration from across the table. But maybe I’m imagining it. After enough attempts, I can read one whole sentence in a breathy, robotic monotone. […]
For some reason, this way of speaking is considered a monumental success. I think the way I just read that is more embarrassing than my stutter. But I have to keep doing it, because it’s the Big Rule: Take your time.
Have you ever told someone who stutters to take their time? Next time you see them, ask how take your time feels. Take your time is a polite and loaded alternative to what you really mean, which is Please stop stuttering. Yet a distressing amount of speech therapy boils down to those three words. […]
As a young stutterer, you start to pick up little tricks to force out words. Specifically, you start moving other parts of your body when your speech breaks down.
I still do this, and I hate it. I don’t know why it works, but it does: When I’m caught on a word, I can get through a jammed sound much faster if I wiggle my right foot. Blocked on that B? Bounce your knee! Unfortunately these secondary behaviors quickly become muscle memory. Sometimes they morph into tics. They also have diminishing returns: A subtle rub of your hands in January won’t have the same conquering effect on a block in February. So that means you’re stuttering for seconds at a time and moving other parts of your body like a weirdo. It’s exhausting. The curse of these secondary behaviors is that they can be just as uncomfortable as your stutter. […]
With each passing year, true fluency becomes harder to attain. Many health insurers don’t cover speech therapy, preventing people with limited funds from having the chance to work with experts. And yet, even many parents who have the means—those who dutifully shuttle their kids to appointments—leave with flawed advice:
Remind them to use their techniques! Tell them to take their time!
We stutterers anticipate our blocks well before they occur. We know how our brains and lungs and lips confront every letter of the alphabet. We know what we look like, what we sound like, what we make shared spaces feel like. We know that our stutter hasn’t gotten better, and that maybe it’s getting worse. We sense that most nights you, Mom and Dad, pray for it to go away. We know you believe you’re helping. We don’t know how else to tell you this: You’re not.
When a person of authority tells a young stutterer to “use your techniques,” they are confirming the stutterer’s worst fear: No one is listening to what you say, only how you say it. Enough of this makes you not want to talk at all. Fluency techniques may work in a therapy room, but, in most cases, they’re extremely hard to deploy in the real world.
It occurred to me that while no two people who stutter will stutter the same way, damned if we don’t have some pretty identical experiences. I also felt condescended to when going to in-school speech therapy. I was in the advanced academic program, but I was being asked to read the equivalent of “See Spot Run.” And worse, I couldn’t. I also hated the way I sounded when doing fluency shaping more than I hated the sound of my stuttering. I also hate my secondary behaviors. I also felt ignored, and then later like a failure, when being reminded to use what I had practiced in speech therapy. I also felt like I was wasting my parents’ money.
It reminds me, as many things do, of a song by Ben Folds. He wrote the song “Late” as a tribute to fellow musician Elliott Smith, who tragically took his own life. Part of the song says:
I played the show
Got back in the van and put the Walkman on
And you were playing
In some other dive a thousand miles away
I played a thousand times before
And like pathetic stars, the truck stops, and the rock club walls
I always knew
You saw them too
I saw many “little rooms” as a kid. The awkwardly patient teachers. The confused waiters. The exasperated parents. We all see them.
I’ve always thought I would write a book about stuttering at some point, but I’m not sure anymore. For one thing, I don’t have that kind of follow-through. For another, I don’t think my story is all that compelling. There was never any made-for-TV ending where I finally learn to speak fluently or overcome all of my fears. It’s still a daily grind. I mean, don’t misunderstand — I’m doing things I never thought possible. My 11-year-old self, sitting in that “little room” slogging through “See Spot Run,” would be absolutely floored by my wife, kids, and mortgage.
But growing up as a kid who stutters has already been written about more compellingly than I could do by people like John. Anything I would add just seems superfluous.
Occasional Trivia
Answer from last time:
Category: Science
Clue: German chemist Otto Hahn (perhaps accidentally) discovered nuclear fission in 1938 by splitting one of these atoms.
Uranium
Today’s clue:
Category: European History
Clue: On March 1, 2007, 170 Swiss troops accidentally wandered into and semi-“invaded” this 62 square mile nation.
Dispatches from the Homefront
Just to really overdose on the stuttering theme for today — my vulnerability hangover is going to be legendary — one of the things I most dreaded about parenthood, which is probably going to sound silly to most of you, was reading to my kids. I imagined I was going to struggle so mightily as to be unintelligible, I would feel terrible, my kids would feel weird about it, they would learn to pronounce words improperly, it would hinder their linguistic development, etc.
But as with most things involving my speech, I just did it anyway because there was no other choice. And…nothing happened. I still stutter when I read, of course, but so what? My kids understand me. (Apparently all that See Spot Run bullshit from middle school was useful after all, eh?) They don’t feel weird about it because they don’t know the difference! It’s not like they’re comparing notes at school and coming home like “Connor says his dad doesn’t read like that.” And also, much to my relief, stuttering isn’t a learned behavior. It’s like our brains know to ignore dysfluencies, so my kids know what’s a word and what’s stuttering. They also hear speech from any number of people every day who don’t stutter, so they know what language sounds like even if I’m stuttering.
My older daughter recently commented on one of my secondary behaviors for the first time. I have a tendency to close my eyes during dysfluencies, so she asked “Why did you close your eyes when you were talking?” And I just told her “Sometimes I have trouble getting words out, and when I have trouble getting words out, I close my eyes.” And that was that. I’m sure when she’s older she’ll have more questions, and I’ll be happy to answer them.
I think one of the main causes of emotional baggage around my speech was that, growing up in the South in the 80s and 90s, it just wasn’t something we talked about. I remember going shopping with one of my grandmothers and bumping into one of her friends who asked how I was liking middle school, and I must’ve said something about joining the band because then my grandmother took over and said “…yes, he’s going to play the trumpet because we think it might help with his…um…” [she got visibly uncomfortable and lowered her voice to a whisper] “…his breathing.”
I remember thinking to myself “wow, she won’t even say it.”
I don’t want that to be the vibe around my speech for my kids. If anything, I want them to be embarrassed that I never shut up about it.