17
Entering Nineteen Eighty-Five mother realized that, as I was a
student, she could add me to her medical coverage at her hospital job
without having to pay extra for only one additional family member.
After my health scare last year, she added me likely to ensure she
wouldn't have to be stuck with the full bill in case something
happened, but also to take credit for doing something for me while
not putting herself out. Either way, it was nice to have health
coverage. About a month after she told me this, she discovered her
plan covered Speech Therapy for those who stuttered and she thought
this was a great idea and I was astonished as well as I had thought
that was only something I could have gotten during my school years,
not as an adult. An appointment was made and I'd soon have my first
meeting.
With business college classes, my Saturday computer room monitor job,
and my thirty hour a week grocery store job, it had been a challenge
to find a spot for the visits, but once found it was locked-in as a
weekly appointment. The speech therapist was in the hospital
building itself down a few twists and turns in the old wing. As
chance would have it, I would come to know this building well over
the next few years and visit it again from time to time during the
rest of my life, seeing it change, seeing it grow. As I finally
found the therapist's office, she confirmed it was me and we settled
in her room which included a number of props, for want of a better
word.
After the routine paperwork questions, her first question about my
stuttering was if I stuttered when talking to pets or young children?
It turned out there were typically two types of stutterers, nervous
and habitual. Nervous stutters didn't stammer when talking to
their pets and children because there was no reason to feel
threatened by them. As I did stutter when talking to them,
that likely made me a habitual stutter, where I stuttered as a result
of the back of my mind thinking I should stutter and thus the
subconscious made it a self-fulfilling prophecy. And as it did,
that stammering experience reinforced that subconscious expectation
of stuttering.
She explained that we all made mistakes when talking as children and
often what happens with stutters is that someone makes fun of them or
criticizes them for it. For those criticized, they get nervous and
the stuttering becomes associated with times when one feels nervous.
For those made fun of, the stuttering becomes something for the mind
to watch-out for and thus the seed is planted. Was there someone in
my life who made fun of my stuttering, a family member or friend?
POW! Moments from my life flashed before me and I knew who
but I realized I couldn't give the answer. I just shook my head.
Perhaps she believed my response, or perhaps she realized that I had
thought of someone as she further added that one's stuttering
would often be at its worst when around this person and it was
often best if the relationship with this person was addressed as
well. I just shrugged my shoulders.
She decided to just move on and ask me if I realized what I did when
I stuttered? So I thought to explain to her the repetitive starting
of some words, or hesitating on others. But that wasn't what she was
asking for, ''What else do you do?'' I was stumped and this was when
she had me sit in front of the mirror and look at myself as I spoke,
rather than facing her. Did I see what she meant? No I
hadn't and so she pointed out the foot stomps and fist clenching.
Once she pointed those out, I knew exactly what she was talking
about. ''And your face?'' I was once again clueless and she
explained that was because I was closing my eyes at the times I'd
stutter and thus didn't see that in the mirror, nor my other facial
contortions as I spoke.
She explained that these weren't actually part of stuttering itself
but a coping technique gone wrong. Did I remember a time when I
was stuttering and I found stamping my foot seemed to help get the
word out that one time? Once when I was trying to say something, did
I close my eyes to concentrate on getting it out and it worked?
What would often happened to stutterers, she explained, was that
these one time 'helpers' became a lifetime of engrained ticks that
occurred during the stammering and as it seemed to help once, the
mind repeated these along with the stuttering in an attempt to ward
off future problems. But instead these became additional problems as
they, ultimately, didn't make the stuttering go away.
Our time was up for our first appointment and I left for my car in
the parking garage and ended up just sitting there for a while as,
after two decades of stuttering, I felt this past hour had given me a
lifetime's worth of insight and information to dwell on and consider.
And I reflected on the past.
My mother often told me the story of how she met my father. She was
a phone operator back in the days when all calls were made by talking
to the operator and she, thus, connecting the wires to get you to the
person you wanted. There was this one guy who'd call her desk and
had the hardest time saying who it was he wanted to connect with and
she would patiently tease it out of him and soon he'd make sure to
place his calls, when he could, when she was at the switch board.
This lead to him discovering her hours and eventually resulted in a
date... Then two. Eventually they married. My mother patted
herself on the back for having cured my father of his stuttering and
his subsequent advancement into the management role at the ski area.
I remembered the times when I'd arrive on the plane to Colorado after
having spent the school year with my father. I'd get off the plane
and stuttered-up a storm for the next few days. My mother demanded
to know what my father had done to me during my school year to have
made my stuttering so much worse. But in reality I had stuttered
less while with him and had only gotten worse when I had gotten off
the plane. I remembered the couple of kids during High School that
would make fun of my stuttering, but they would often do so by fake
stuttering on my first name. As I never stuttered on it myself, I
always found their mocking of me a sad reflection on them as they
couldn't even notice what words I actually stuttered on in order to
make fun of me. None of my elementary school friends or siblings
ever made fun of my stuttering, at
least not to my face. There was the one kid who asked
about it once, but never made fun of it.
My mother was incensed and talked angrily of her son-in-law who would
only ever talk to his daughter in cutesy baby talk during her
preschool years, to the point that was how she grew-up talking and
had to have additional help in her early school years to learn how to
talk clearly, in an understandable way. But a lesson I learned early
in life: We often complain most about the people who do the things
we don't want to admit about ourselves. When the therapist asked
me if there was anyone who had made fun of my stuttering during my
life, the answer was yes, My Mother. She was the only person from my
pre-high school years who made fun of my stuttering and mocked me
about it when no one else was around.
And she was the coworker at the hospital whose insurance coverage was
now enabling me to go to speech therapy for the first time in my
life. While I doubted the therapist knew my mother personally, I
didn't want to jinx my future appointments with her by saying it was
another person who worked at the hospital.
As it turned out, it didn't matter. When I arrived for my second
appointment, the therapist had to explain to me that she would no
longer be able to see me as the insurance coverage was for people who
began stuttering as the result of a recent health occurrence, such as
a stroke, not for those who already stuttered as it was deemed a
preexisting health condition. As the insurance was through
the hospital, they had decided to wave the full cost of my initial
appointment and a partial visit for today as they hadn't let me know
in advance, but any further visits would have to be at full price,
out of pocket. Well over a hundred dollars per visit, it was out of
my budget and not something my mother would pay for either.
So to give me the best advice she could in lieu of having speech
therapy, she told me to be aware of the additional ticks I had gained
along with the stuttering and to learn to stop doing them and if
there were people in my life who reinforced my stuttering by making
fun of it, I should avoid seeing them. And when it came to the
stuttering itself, it was a learned habit and I needed to unlearn it.
The best first step was to pause when I thought I was going to
stutter and wait until I could speak clearly, rather than experience
the stutter itself and thus reinforce the habit.
With this rushed last bit of advice, I left the hospital and got into
the car and drove back to my mother's mobile home where I would live
for the next few years of my life...
With the only person who made fun of my stuttering, at
least to my face.
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