[ Contents ]
From: Terry Dartnall
Date: 10/6/03
Time: 5:42:51 PM
Remote Name: 132.234.9.84
Hi Mary
What a perceptive question. There is a definite profile here. I was born in 1943 and didn’t meet my father until I was turned two. Dad was a regimental sergeant major and had spent the last few years chasing people around in India and Burma. My side of the story is that, one day, this man appeared at the bottom of the stairs. My mother said, “Who’s this?” and I dutifully replied, “Daddy!” To begin with it was like having another uncle in the house—but he stayed and stayed! I think I had been pretty spoilt and had slept in Mum’s bedroom. I don’t know whether I slept in her bed. I was (quite rightly) turfed out of the bedroom pretty fast!
My speech was very slow. I had a sort of ideoglossic language that I shared with my mother, and that nobody else understood.
Poor old Dad! He was a sweet man, but he did do things by numbers, and his own father had disappeared when he was 4. That is, my father was 4 years old when his father disappeared (you probably worked that out for yourself. If my grandfather had disappeared when he was four I probably wouldn’t be here now.) So Dad came back from being a sergeant-major in India and Burma, to the woman he loved, and found a slow, small boy who he couldn’t understand. He told me later on that it drove him crazy. I was slow with everything else as well, and that drove him crazy too. They used to put walking reins on you in those days, but it had the effect of slowing Dad down, rather than stopping me rushing off into the traffic.
So your question is spot on. I didn’t talk very well, and Dad was probably impatient. I probably felt pressured, and maybe that’s when it started.
All this is wisdom after the event, of course. I can’t remember any of it, and we didn’t discuss it much. Well, hardly at all. I don’t even know whether my parents knew that I have a stammer.
You have interesting initials. Mmm...
Terry