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From: Joe Mirly
Date: 08 Oct 2005
Time: 14:49:59 -0500
Remote Name: 67.168.86.109
Hi Joe, thanks for your kind words. That is a great question, about influential people or role models that I may have had. Not so much one or two people, but I believe most of the influence was from a close group of family and friends - over a period of time. This group of people never seemed to care about whether I stuttered or not, and didn't let me off the hook for anything. If there was pizza to be ordered, many times they'd want me to order it. That seemed strange to me, why would they want the person who stuttered to phone in the pizza order? Didn't they know that I hated using the phone and that it was difficult for me? I guess not - either that or they didn't care. Well that's not exactly it - they didn't consider my stuttering to be something that should hold me back. If they didn't care that I stuttered why should I? I guess that is the message that grew inside my head over time, that I was the one that seemed to have all these hang-ups about stuttering - nobody else did. The people close to me laid the groundwork, I just had to put the pieces together - and over time I was able to. Joe