Racking up the bylines

Ooh ooh my name's in the paper again. That's exciting. Someone with a keen sense of the obvious once said that people should write what they know. (Fair enough. I suppose if people wrote what they didn't know, the Whi+e House Press Corps would be a lot bigger.) And if there's one thing I know, it's useless trivia. But there are two things I know, it's
useless trivia and stuttering.

At any rate, I wasn't particularly pleased with the edits made to my original piece, so here it is only slightly refined from the way it leaked from my brain:


Throughout my academic career, I would often spend the night before the first day of school lying in bed staring at the ceiling with clammy hands, a dry mouth and a nervous stomach, absolutely horrified of what was going to transpire the following day.

What could possibly be so frightening as to render an otherwise normal school kid into a neurotic, trembling mess? It wasn't the impending unbearable burden of a year's worth of school or even the prospect of a particularly sadistic professor with a penchant for unannounced quizzes and a disdain for grading curves. No, it was something much worse. Like clockwork, each teacher would inevitably utter the dreaded phrase "Let's go around the room and introduce ourselves." [Cue ominous music.]

Most people think nothing of such common occurrence. Yet, when I had the floor, something unusual happened. My eyes closed. My jaw clinched. My foot inexplicably jerked and tapped. My face contorted and blood rushed to my cheeks, adding a lovely maroon hue to an already curious expression. The words came out one painfully slow syllable at a time. It was certainly a memorable first impression, just not in the way I would've preferred.

Let me explain. Roughly three million Americans stutter — and I happen to be one of them. More specifically, since childhood, I have been diagnosed — several times, as if I needed reminding — as a severe stutterer.

Thus, I felt I was as qualified as anyone to inform the masses that this week is National Stuttering Awareness Week. It's like spring break, but slightly less fun and without the beach.

I felt inclined to address the issue because it seems to me that stuttering, as a disorder, gets little media attention. Admittedly, there are more pressing issues in the medical community — stuttering isn't fatal, physically debilitating or painful. It has many social effects, however, that people often don’t realize. And so, stuttering deserves at least as much attention as is paid to other — ahem — disorders that inundate prime time television with advertisements of various "enhancements."

Perhaps due to this lack of exposure, the most experience the general public has with stuttering tends to be through an animated pig with an apparent aversion to wearing pants. Brilliant.

This lack of public knowledge also begets several myths about stuttering that warrant quelling. First and foremost, stuttering does not indicate any sort of mental disability in the speaker. Stutterers are every bit as intelligent as fluent speakers. One study, in fact, found that the average IQ for stutterers is 14 points higher than the national average.

Nor is stuttering something children necessarily outgrow. Most children who stutter will not stutter into adulthood, but many will. I've been trying to outgrow my stuttering for roughly 23 years now. It's a safe bet to assume that it'll be around for 23 more.

Many well-meaning listeners believe it is helpful to remind stutterers to breathe deeply and relax, or to finish a stutterer’s sentence. Actually, this usually only increases anxiety. It is better to simply be patient and let us finish.

Perhaps the most pervasive myth about stuttering, particularly within the stuttering community, is that a stutterer can only be successful after he can speak fluently. There are many well-known, high profile stutterers who, well, don't. Bruce Willis, James Earl Jones and Senator Joseph Biden are just a few "recovered" stutterers that have gone on to have great success using their voices. Incidentally, Senator Biden has earned a reputation in D.C. as one of the longer-winded members of the senate.

Some in the stuttering community are uneasy about the message that this sends, particularly to younger stutterers. I concur. The idea that stutterers must learn to speak fluently in order to be successful is horribly inaccurate. Being a stutterer is indeed a challenge, but not a professional death sentence. Certainly, being fluent might make success more easily attainable — let's not sugar coat it. But most things worth doing are rarely easy.

For those looking for more information on stuttering -- particularly younger stutterers and parents with children who stutter -- may I recommend starting at the National Stuttering Association, found at www.nsastutter.org.

In the spirit of Stuttering Awareness Week, you may now consider yourself aware. Class dismissed.