Originally published August 19, 2016.
Imagine this: you’re giving a presentation in class. Or in front of your clients. Or you're trying to win the affections of that doe-eyed cutie who’s gotten your heart all a-flutter. Whatever the task, it’s crucial that you make a good impression, that you do your best to be witty and charming, or at least avoid sounding like a Porky Pig in the midst of a stroke. You open your mouth to speak . . . and suddenly, your words meet an unyielding wall. You struggle for a moment, trying at first to ease the words through, as though smuggling them past some fleshy blockade, and when that fails you resort to force. Your face scrunches up with the effort, but your mouth and tongue ultimately prove uncooperative. As the shattered fragments of your prepared speech finally eject themselves, piece by piece, from your mouth, you notice people are exchanging uncomfortable glances. Are you having a seizure? Are you reeling from some sort of demonic possession? Are your cybernetic circuits glitching? And how are you going to get through both the immediate difficulties and the ensuing embarrassment?
No, it’s not any of those things. And as for getting through the immediate complications and deflecting the eventual humiliation, it’s tough. As a foremost expert on trying to be witty and charming while your mouth stalls like an old Buick at an intersection, I know a thing or two about the inevitable frustration.
I stutter. This manifests itself as an inability to get my words out when I want them to come out. It’s hardly a new affliction. The ancient Greek philosopher Demosthenes stuttered. (True story: he kept pebbles in his mouth in order to cure his impediment. Speech therapy has sure come a long way since then.) Bruce Willis, Joe Biden, James Earl Jones, Winston Churchill, George VI of Britain, and a host of other famous people have stuttered at some point. Being among such distinguished company, however, doesn’t exactly make me quiver with unbridled gratitude.
It began at some point after my birth, as these things so often do. I don’t remember a point in my life where I didn’t stutter, so I sorta assume it was always there. We still don’t know exactly what causes it. A little later in life, when other kids asked me why I talked a little funny, I had several answers, blaming my disfluency on things like early-life alien abduction and severe trauma relating to my potty-training, but I still really don’t know what caused it. I went on an LDS mission, during which I met a self-professed shaman who told me—after she told a story about guiding spirits to the Great Beyond and used some sort of crystal to divine my aura—that some ancestor on my mother’s side had eaten some weird herb, which had consequently caused my disfluency problems. (If that isn't a reason not to eat your vegetables, I don’t know what is. You never know what impediments you may be inflicting upon your hapless progeny.) She was the second of four people on my mission who also tried their hand at addressing my speech problem or seeking to cure me, a group that also included a nice Pentecostal couple who tried speaking in tongues (that’s a trippy experience, if you’ve never heard it for yourself), a Navajo medicine man, and an old LDS guy in my last area.
So I don’t know its causes. All I know is its effects. All I know is that in stressful situations, my tongue and lips go on strike. (No, I'm not going to give them more paid vacation. They should stop asking.) These stressful situations may include, but are not limited to: job interviews, introductions to new people, speaking in front of crowds, speaking in front of attractive women, or speaking in front of any human being I might conceivably desire to impress. As you can imagine, first dates are stressful. (Actually, “stressful” is only a good word to describe my first dates if it’s also the word you use to describe manned Mars landings.) If I’m allowed to get to know and grow comfortable around a person, my stutter tends to ebb, allowing me some freedom to express myself as I want, but by that time the damage is often already done. Incidentally, if you’re a girl/woman and I’m having trouble speaking to you, take it as a compliment. It means I wouldn't mind having you as my co-pilot on an eternal spaceship of love, if you get my meaning.
For example, the other other night I was at ward prayer, a time-honored institution among LDS singles’ wards designed, apparently, as a sadistic experiment to observe the the pre-mating rituals of a group of sexually repressed young adults. I spotted a girl I’d seen a few times who had struck my fancy. I initially avoided her, because I wasn’t having a good day as far as fluency goes, and I didn’t want her first impression of me to be of a tongue-tied simpleton. (Sometimes I just charge in and talk to girls, but this one was cute enough that I hoped to postpone a first impression until a night where my vocal faculties were a little more cooperative.) However, the fates conspired, and at one point I ran right into her, face to face. I thought I might escape her notice if I didn’t make eye contact, but she cheerfully waved and introduced herself. “I’m Galadriel,” she said, which is obviously made up for her protection and not her real name, unless her parents were super big Lord of the Rings fans, in which case she deserves your sympathy.
I opened my mouth to answer Galadriel. Predictably, my name refused to come out. The R sound can be really stubborn sometimes. I briefly considered telling her my name was something a little easier to say, preferably something that started with a nice, easy vowel, like Ichabod. But then I’d have to persuade everyone else to start calling me Ichabod, and if we ever got married or anything, I’d have to perpetuate the lie indefinitely, which would just get awkward. So I stuck with Ryan, which took a few seconds to get out. By this time the typical what’s-wrong-with-him look was beginning to contort Galadriel's pretty face, but she recovered quickly. “So what do you do?”
Once again, the truth was wedged somewhere midway down my trachea. By the time I managed to say writer, Galadriel was looking at me with a sadly bemused look one usually reserves for a puppy with its head stuck in a fence. At this point, a little alarm in my brain was starting to wail, Abort! Abort! I wanted to get out of there—and maybe try talking to her again next week wearing a fake mustache and goatee. At this point, I could also pretend I was having some sort of medical emergency. There were also candles nearby in case I wanted to figure out some way to make it look like a spontaneous combustion. But I was committed, hesitant to light myself on fire, and not very good at faking a heart attack, so I blundered on. Eventually, the conversation ended, Galadriel waved and moved on to talk to somebody else, and I retreated.
So that’s basically how things are a lot of the time.
Next, let’s get a couple of things straight. First, we do not use the word disability. It’s an inconvenience, an annoyance. Next, if you finish my sentences, I will probably fantasize about stabbing you through the eyeball with a salad fork, or whatever sharp implement happens to be within range. I may cover my annoyance and refrain from causing you any injury, but don’t think you’ve escaped my mental wrath. Finishing a stutter’s sentences deprives him of what little dignity he can manage. Let me do—
do—
do—
—it on my own.
See? You wanted to finish my sentences. You're probably wondering if you've ever been among those to rouse my fury in the past. You may have been. But it's okay. I am merciful, and so I will spare your eyeballs. For now.
Also, do not exclude me from difficult situations just because you’re worried I might be afraid. I speak in church, I give presentations at work, and I teach Sunday School. My mouth may be afraid of those situations, but I’m not. And whatever you do, do not condescend. I can’t tell you how many well-meaning folks—especially the elders’ quorum president types—have treated me like a charity project of theirs, as though befriending the poor stuttering kid would help them cross off an item on their weekly benevolence checklist. I don’t need your pity. Your friendship is always welcome, but I don’t want it because you’re trying to score some compassion points with the Man Upstairs.
Living with this . . . ahem, inconvenience . . . can be a little annoying. In addition to my difficulty in the aforementioned situations, it tends to lead to some mild to moderate self-doubt, especially when the women I fancy tend to pass over me in favor of guys who sound a little more like Ryan Gosling and a little less like a video you’re trying to watch on your grandmother’s dial-up Internet.
And it was tough to be a missionary, believe me. How are you supposed to get out and there and boldly declare glad tidings of great joy when your vocal apparatus behaves a little like the Millennium Falcon with a broken hyperdrive?
I’d be lying if I said that I never let it get me down. There have been many nights where I’ve punched my pillow like it was the 'roided-up Russian baddie from Rocky IV, pummeling it with all my fury in my desperate need to take my frustrations out on something. I’ve sat in my car and screamed with impotent rage; I’ve wept, wondering what I did to earn this trial. On those countless nights I’ve petitioned God for relief, only to receive apparent silence from the heavens.
And that’s the end. My life sucks.
No, I’m just kidding. My life is actually quite wonderful. There are billions of people out there who wish they could live as a stutterer with very few other serious issues in life. So I’m grateful for that. I could be fleeing from my life in the middle of war zone, sleeping on the streets and scavenging from dumpsters, or foraging for meager water in the middle of some desolate village. Or I could be stuck in a thousand less dramatic predicaments, like those poor souls whose job it is to clean up all the confetti in the stadium after a Super Bowl. The point is, I’m doing fine.
Part of that comes from the slow realization of the purpose behind the pain. I’ve gradually seen some of the good that comes from afflictions—avenues in life I’ve taken because of my difficulties, as well as lessons I’ve learned.
About five years ago, I wrote an article while working for the LDS magazine Ensign in which I detailed my struggle with a stutter and related some of the lessons I’ve learned. (You can read it here. The online version doesn't show the visuals, so I included that below.) Because it was in the LDS Church’s official publication and had to therefore appeal to a wide range of people, I had to strip the article of the personality with which I usually try to write. The resulting article is meant to score high on the inspiration scale but is about as entertaining as a hydrogen bomb’s instruction manual. (C'est la vie, I guess.) There was also the matter of length. An Ensign article can only be so long. (I did, however, manage to sneak the symbol of Star Wars’ Rebel Alliance into the Ensign, which I count among my proudest achievements.)
That was me five or six years ago. I've aged well.
The full article gets into a lot more depth, but the essence of the lesson I learned goes like this: sometimes God doesn’t release you from your trials. Instead of removing the burden, He strengthens the back that bears them, as the title of the article so pithily declares. I believe our purpose on Earth is to learn all we can so we can be entrusted with much greater blessings later, and only God knows exactly where to break us so he can reconstruct us into something new and improved. He strikes us right at the fault lines of the soul, knowing that when we rebuild with His help, we become greater than we ever were.
Not only that, but sometimes challenges open the doors to other opportunities. I don’t know I would have ever started to write if I never stuttered. When I was a kid, I realized I couldn’t communicate with my mouth as well as I wanted, so I poured my heart into using the written word to convey my feelings. These days, I’m no Shakespeare—I’m not even a J. K. Rowling—but I feel I owe what skills I have to my early frustrations with my speech.
Heck, if I hadn’t stuttered, maybe I would have played sports or something, and maybe I would have been a starting quarterback with dreams of playing college and maybe pro football, and then during my senior homecoming game I might have torn my Achilles tendon and dashed all of my future hopes, and then my high school sweetheart and I would have gotten married, but I would become bitter because of my lost dreams, and she and I would grow distant, and eventually we’d separate and I’d be an old man alone who dreamed all day of his high school greatness and told everyone within earshot of how good I used to be, and sometimes I’d just sit in the dark with my high school trophies and softly sob to myself.
(Whoa. If you think about it, stuttering really helped me dodge a bullet there.)
But seriously, there are plus sides to any inconvenience we face in this life. I had a religion teacher in college who suggested that for most of us, if we put all of our challenges into a hat and passed the hat around the room, we’d probably want to take back the original challenges God had assigned to us rather than risk taking on some unknown trials. I believe He knows exactly what it takes for each of us to attain our fullest potential, and our individually tailored challenges are proof of that.
Even without a religious perspective, your struggles have benefits. You become a stronger person. You become more compassionate. (I have my moments, I suppose.) You become more conscious of others’ struggles, and—ideally—you seek to help them as well.
Does stuttering kinda suck sometimes? Absolutely. Would I trade it away if I had the chance? Um, yes. Definitely. But am I grateful, in my own way, for my challenges? Yes. I am who I am today because of them, and being who I am today works for me.
