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From: Steven Kaufman
Date: 15 Oct 2008
Time: 22:46:05 -0500
Remote Name: 64.12.117.204
Good evening Anita, I came across your paper on this wonderful site and I knew I had to respond. I am still honored that you were in attendance when I hosted my seminar at the National Stuttering Association in North Jersey, and it is my utmost intention to present it again when all the conference lands in Phoenix in a few short months. I had experiences with my stuttering that have made me wonder whether it is a gift or a curse. There's one experience (out of so many) that come to mind that have had a great impact on my life as a person who stutters. I am not immune by any means from the fear of speaking to people on the phone. It's ironic in a way because while most people who stutter are deathly afraid of the phone (a speech therapist actually coined the term Ma Bell Syndrome), I am not scared of talking on it....but I am scared about how others may have perceived me doing so. I have difficulty with what my speech therapist terms "hard consonants,' words beginning with the letter "m," "w," "r," and so on. One time I was calling up Amtrak to make a reservation to go to Washington, DC. Too many times before I had tried to say that and had felt like a car stuck in snow, just spinning its wheels but without the traction. The customer service representative gets on the phone and asks how she can help me today and I said I'd like to make a reservation for....and soon I could feel everything in motion. The chords locking,and I was trapped, and I just blurted out "District of Columbia." The woman said hold on, let me check, and she's saying "I apologize, but I don't see that on our computers." And I was surprised and in one of my rude moments, I said "You go there ten times a day from New York, so I know it's on there..." and as that's going on, I'm reverting back to my struggles to get "Washington" out, but it's coming out "W-W-W-W" and she said, "Wyoming? Wausau?" and trying to guess what I was saying, and finally I snapped and yelled "Washington!" to which she said "Well why didn't you say that in the first place?" I felt so worthless at that point and vowed never to do that again, that I'd rather book my tickets online and avoid it. After that incident, it stuck in my mind for a few days. I felt what is it I have to apologize for? Nothing. I am a person who stutters and I am going to get the words out even if the other person has to wait. I am speaking my mind because I want to be heard, but most importantly, I need to be heard. And once I realized that, my life did change in so many ways. It didn't matter if I went up the movie box office on a Saturday night and stuttered, I was going to say what I wanted and it was going to be heard. I learned how to be aggressive and challenge my stutter head-on while talking on the phone, and new doors opened for me as a result. Whether you think your stuttering is a blessing or a curse is up to you and no one else. I'll take this opportunity now to share an anecdote with those reading this. I love going to the movies, and sometimes there are certain quotes that we remember which stick with you-you know where you were when you heard it, perhaps. One of my favorite movies is "Hellboy," and in the very last scene of the movie, one of the main characters says "What makes a man a man? Is it his origins? Is it genetic? No, it's the choices he makes. Not how he starts things, but by how he ends them." You have the power to decide what your stuttering will be. If it's your curse, you will live your life avoiding everything because you have to. If it's your gift, you will embrace it and welcome its challenges and the rewards it gives you. What has it given me? It's given me power. The freedom to know I refuse to let my speech hold me hostage. It's given me resilience. Compassion. It's given me membership into the National Stuttering Association, where I've met and shared wisdom some of the most amazing people from all over the Americas and the world. But most importantly, it's given me the feeling to say into a mirror "My name is Steven Kaufman, and I AM a person who stutters." Some things really are priceless. Steven Kaufman