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From: Russ Hicks
Date: 10/17/03
Time: 4:05:55 PM
Remote Name: 12.237.88.139
Hi again!
Like most stutterers I am HIGHLY sensitive to others reaction to my speech. But over the course of many years, I have learned to be as objective as possible about it. (Toastmasters taught me lot how to do this, by the way.)
There is good news and bad news. The good news is that Shirley never had the slightest reaction to my speech. And believe me I looked not only for her words, but for facial expressions, eye contact, body language, ... everything! We talked about a great number of things on our walks, but amazingly enough even when I did mention my stuttering a few times ("Boy, I'm having trouble talking today!" - and "My stuttering just comes and goes so randomly."), she still never reacted to it except to say, "Oh okay." MY speech was just never of much interest to HER.
The bad news is that I was kind of disappointed that I never got to discuss it with her in any detail. (She apparently moved away a couple of years ago, because I haven't seen her in a long time.) If MY speech is so hugely important to ME, why isn't it maybe just a LITTLE important to HER? Hey, could it be that people are far more concerned with THEIR OWN problems than they are with someone else's problems? Well duh! Is there a lesson here? I think so...
To be honest, that's one of the things that makes an NSA national conference so much fun. A bunch of us stutterers can get together for countless hours and talk about our stuttering to the point that fluent people run off screaming into the night! WHY are you people so obsessed with something that trivial? Ah ha! A good question... at least from their point of view! <smile> WE tend to think that they are horrified - or worse - with our ghastly problem. In truth, most of the time, they couldn't care less.
How's that for a long answer to your short question?
Thanks for stopping by! That's a good question!
Russ