Sinister: Billy Bibbit

[Ann Foreyt]

S-s-s-s-s-inister~

I was reading an old Ann Landers column today... and stuck in the middle
of some petty family arguments was a letter about stutterers. In nice,
politically-correct words this writer talked about (can a writer talk? oh, 
well) this "affliction" and how others are supposed to "deal with it". For 
some reason, that just absolutely drove something deep and painful into my 
heart. I have to be 'dealt with'?  Yes, I know how it
feels to be caught in public, on the phone, in front of someone you
love/respect/fear with your mouth open and a word 25 seconds in the making, 
but I never before knew that I had to be 'dealt with'.

The wording of that hurt. Worse than the clumsily helpful teachers,
friends, and telemarketers who try to finish my sentences and put words in 
my mouth (or would that be pull words OUT?). It's already painful enough for 
me to understand that I will never be comfortable on the phone, that I have 
aimed my college choice (life) in such a way that I may find a job in which 
I will have minimal contact with real people, and that the written word is 
my only semi-eloquent method of communication; that teachers ignore my hand 
in class and boys just ignore me wholly (the spasmodic jaw look is not 
exactly worthy of many lustful gazes heh heh heh).

It's not so much that the topic was talked about, brought to the
forefront (if only for an Ann Landers section), but that it was done so
bloodlessly. It's not an animal you are 'dealing with'... it's a person... 
and no matter how embarrassing it may be for you... you can bet it's worse 
for the girl or boy standing there with a simple word strangling them. To 
just speak of handling the immediate problem isn't going to do anything... 
except make the listener more aware of the problem and the speaker more 
self-conscious.

It's funny how one word, one phrase, can so acutely wound.  Especially when 
the point was too help... sometimes those darts hit the deepest.

Forgive me. I am depressed and angry and sensitive and should not be writing 
letters.

Ann



"What was your favorite color? What was your favorite poem? What would our 
children have looked like? Where would our lives have taken us?" 
Photographing Fairies

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