#9 – Twinkle

Have you ever said something that you wish you hadn’t? For me it’s something I didn’t say which I wish I had.

Twinkle.

Well it’s not so much that I didn’t say it, as I couldn’t say it. I was in grade 4, the teacher asked me a question and I just couldn’t answer. The word was in my head but just couldn’t escape my mouth.

My stutter was born on that day, on that word. Twinkle.

I try to hide it but sometimes it hides about as well as a tractor on a tennis court. I went to weekly speech-therapy sessions, where I learnt two fascinating things:

1. No one really knows how stutters come about;

2. South Africans call traffic lights ‘robots’.

Both of these things are equally strange to me. Almost sadistically, I mostly stutter on the letter ‘a’, meaning I often struggle to say (or spell) my own name.

I think that’s partly why writing this blog is so liberating. It lets me express myself without worrying I’ll stumble through it like a drunk person trying to walk in a straight line for a sobriety test.

But in that sense, a lot of us have a ‘stutter’. Something which stops us from asking a question, giving an opinion, offering help, maybe asking someone out on a date. Whatever it is, maybe it’s about finding a way to express yourself.

Maybe it’s about finding the red light on your ‘robot’ and making it into a green light.

Next week: Three books and what I learnt from them