Speech Therapy

Until kindergarten I relied on the kindness of my twin to speak for me. It wasn't that I couldn't talk, I just had great difficulties in doing so.

The medicine I had as a premature baby, apparently while keeping me alive, reaped havoc on my teeth. This left me front-toothless until I was well into the first grade. Not having these teeth had never really bothered me, because my twin and I conversed in our own language. Generally, by punching and hitting one another very hard.

As expected any word with a "-ch" or "-s" were on the "words to avoid" list. Thus leaving me virtually mute.

My fondest memories of my eldest brother were of him pointing to items like "ketchup" and asking

"What is that?"

"ketttshhhupp." I replied. Yes he was and is an excellent brother.

My school kept on putting me in speech therapy. The very name alone a sick ironic joke. I was paired with 2-3 other kindred souls with various maladies of the talking kind. Speech class was always held in a small room with encouraging posters on the wall of people conversing normally. It was like porn for the speaking challenged, teasing us. I longed to be like them.

It always started the same way, flashcards were thrown at me like I was in a sudden-death rapid fire round of a game show:

judge

catch

flash

The words literally rolled off of my tongue though technically I don't think you could call what I sounded out actual words, they were more like sounds, because there were no teeth there to assist in their creation . Everyday I attempted to will the cards to say words like "cat" or "dog". I was always left staring off into the distance, disbelief written all over my face.

I wanted to tap on her front teeth and say,
"You see...I do not have these, we have a classic case of 'exercise in futility' going on here, no matter how many times I say it, it's not going to come out right."

I never did say that though, so on we continue. . .

Even after my two-front teeth came in, in speech class I remained. In fact, I was in speech until 6th grade. Apparently my teeth and I had an apprenticeship/ journeymen/ master thing going for us. We couldn't be left to our own devices and required years of training.

The games became more enjoyable as I grew older, and the flashcards were printed on a high gloss instead of a matte paper which was certainly more ascetically pleasing for me.

Subconsciously, I probably continued to mispronounce things so I could stay in speech. It had become such a part of my weekly routine that it was hard to see it end. But end it did, and I've been successfully using my two front teeth for years now.

To this day I will put any one's pronunciation and diction of church, kitchen, shirt, ketchup, to shame.