Life on Delay

by John Hendrickson

Nearly every decision in my life has been shaped by my struggle to speak.

Between 5 and 10 percent of all kids exhibit some form of disfluency. A child may speak without issue for the earliest years of his or her life, then, like me, start to stutter between the ages of two and five. For at least 75 percent of these kids, the issue won’t follow them into adulthood.

Many people who stutter come to dread the act of saying their own name. One reason for this is conditioning: we say our names more frequently than any other proper noun, and we tend to stutter most when we meet new people.

Humans rely on a different part of the brain for recitation than we do for impromptu conversation, and thus we use different neural pathways to communicate memorized speech. When you step onstage, you immediately become someone else.

This is really interesting ... I understand the singing, but not so much the acting

Not long ago, I found the final typed version—ten pages—buried in a long gray envelope. I had separated all the sentences into three-to-five-word chunks with backslashes in blue ink. I had underlined the first vowel in each phrase, just like they used to appear in my old speech-therapy practice texts.

Of course you didn’t forget your name. You know it better than any other word, because you stutter on it more than any other word.

Owen’s dad, Austin, is the author of Steal Like An Artist, a meditation on creativity that doubles as a self-help manual.

I can't believe this researcher lives in Austin and that the family referenced is the Kleons

“When I think about how I want the world to see me, the answer is: I don’t know. I know how I don’t want them to see me. I don’t want them to see me the way I see myself.”