Sorry I haven't called...

So... it has been a while.

I could give a whole slew of excuses for my lack of posts, but I will not. I will just say that much has happened since the fire and leave it at that.

I'm back. Will you have me?

Good.

The last two months have made up what I like to call a "bad speech cycle." My speech has been garbled and strained, and I have endured more than my share of awkward encounters. For example:

I leave on Thursday for a pair of races in Pennsylvania and DC, and my bike needs a new bottom bracket bearing. This specific bearing is a little bit hard to find, so I had to call every shop in my area on Saturday. Almost every single shop hung up on me or told me that I was "breaking up." Each time, this made me a little angrier. I would call back and say "hi, I just called looking for a bearing and you hung up on me. I stutter. Please stay on the line."

Each time, the person on the other end of the line would say something along the lines of "I'm so sorry" or "I didn't mean to offend you." They didn't mean any harm, but damn - a new bearing for my bike shouldn't cost me my dignity.

I have experienced countless other similar encounters recently, and I'm starting to lose my sense of humor. I mean, yeah, I can be quite a spectacle, but is stuttering really so rare that people just don't know how to respond?

Enough bitching - time for some good news:

Sarah and I are finally about to move into an apartment, so it looks like we'll have greater stability. That means I'll be back to blogging. Let me know if there is a specific topic you would like for me to discuss.

Stuttering and the Bike

Bike racing is my passion, so in honor of Speedweek, today's post will be about stuttering and the bike.

There has always been a bike in my life. When I was young, I jumped curbs on a bmx bike. In high school, I explored the woods on a mountain bike. In college, I found road racing.

At the top levels, bike racing is a hard sport. It makes no allowance for weaknesses. To be anything more than pack fill, you need to put in 15-25 hours per week of saddle time (depending on the time of year). Simply put, if you are not prepared, you can't play. Success is hard to come by, and failure awaits at every turn. High speed crashes are common, and lycra doesn't provide much protection. Why do I do this?

I love it. I wouldn't put myself through seven hour rides in the rain in January if bike racing didn't have a piece of my heart. I wouldn't pass on pizza, beer, and ice cream for eleven months of the year if I didn't dream of crossing the finish line solo with my arms raised above my head. That said, there is a secondary reason for my dedication to the sport: bike racing is the great equalizer.

At a bike race, it doesn't matter that I stutter. At the start line, I'm not worried that someone is going to make fun of me or that I'll miss out on an opportunity because someone thinks I'm "not right in the head." During a race, I can let my legs do the talking (even if they don't always have much to say). The best part? The benefits of bike racing don't end when I cross the finish line.

The bike disposes of bad stuttering energy. I leave for a training ride with the weight of stuttering on my shoulders. Somewhere along the way, that weight turns into fuel, and when I get home that fuel is spent. The memories of rude comments have lost their sting. The tension in my facial muscles has drained away. I feel physically tired, but my mind is quiet, and I am at peace.

If you happen to be in Athens this Saturday, look for me at the start (and hopefully the finish) of the Twilight Pro race. There will be a lot of things going through my mind, but stuttering will not be one of them.

Mindfulness

Stuttering and frustration are a volatile mix. When I’m having a difficult day, one bad block can make me break down. It is the proverbial insult added to injury. Let’s take yesterday for example. I ride my bike for two hours to a training race (I race bicycles – more on that in a future post). I planned to do the race and ride home. My chain breaks when I get to the race, and I have to sit on the sidelines while I wait for my wife. I go to my local bike shop and ask for a chain. I stutter, and the sales guy laughs. I know he doesn’t mean anything by it, but it stings. I’ve been on my bike for three hours, so I’m tired and lacking patience. I want to go home and relax with my wife. Instead, I get home and find that I have made a mistake on a work project. Now instead of relaxing with my wife, I have to stay up late and fix it. I go to tell Sarah and find her on her computer with her back to me. I start to talk and launch headlong into the mother of all silent blocks. I dance a silent jig in the doorway while I try to force the words out, and she doesn’t even know that I’m behind her. When I finally get the words out, they sound angry. Now Sarah thinks I’m mad at her. Crap. I call my dad/business partner to discuss the work issue, and by now my stuttering is on ten. Thankfully everyone in my family is a certified stutter translator, so my dad magically understands every word I say. Even so, I get off the phone even more tired. I end the day feeling worthless. All I can think about is stuttering. The point of this story is that a broken chain and an error on a work project are easy things to deal with. Stuttering makes little annoyances seem monumental.

Now that I am done whining, let’s get positive. I’m probably going to have problems to deal with tomorrow, and I am probably going to stutter tomorrow, so I need to figure out how to handle these things.

I recently found a quote from Jon Kabat-Zinn that stopped me in my tracks:

Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; On purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.

Mindfulness? This might be the tool I have been looking for. I get so caught up in the effects of stuttering that I let myself be a passenger to it. If I could pay attention “on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally,” I might be able to take back the reins. I might be able to stop the snowball effect that stuttering has on my life. I might even overcome shame and fear. This is exciting stuff.

I wish I had more to share about this topic, but this is a brand new journey for me. I’ll keep you updated.

Famous stutterers

There are a lot of famous stutterers. A list can be found here. So what?

It has never made me feel better to know that famous people stutter... until now. I just found out that Bill Withers, who is responsible for such songs as Lean On Me, Lovely Day, and Use Me, stutters.

Click here.

Stuttering F.A.Q.

I always try to discuss stuttering early in a personal or professional relationship. I address the obvious (yes, I stutter), and more importantly, I let the person know that I will happily answer any questions that they have. Below are some frequently asked questions.

1. Have you always stuttered?
As long as I can remember.

2. What causes stuttering?
There are three schools of thought.

The first holds that stuttering is a learned behavior. All children have some amount of disfluency when they begin to speak. Most children outgrow this disfluency, but a few children develop anxiety about their disfluency and continue to stutter into adulthood.

The second holds that stuttering is a psychological disorder and should be treated with psychoanalysis.

The third holds that stuttering is the result of a neurological problem. This is what I believe.

3. Haven't you tried speech therapy?
Yes. I have tried many different types of speech therapy with varying levels of success. A speech therapist in grade school advised me to skip the first letter of each word. Instead of "my name is Mark," I would say "y ame s ark." I'll let you guess how that turned out. The same therapist also told me to try singing instead of speaking. I'd rather stutter. At the Atlanta Speech School, I was hooked up to a machine that monitored my breathing while I talked. If I breathed "correctly," a balloon on a computer screen would inflate. I could inflate the balloon, but I still stuttered.

After those shenanigans, I began working with Tim Mackesey. Tim did not cure me, but he did help me learn to live as a stutterer. We talked to salespeople at malls or made phone calls to businesses, and I would stutter. People laughed at me, but I survived. Tim gave me tools to deal with the mechanics of stuttering, but more importantly, he gave me the confidence to live in spite of stuttering. Tim will be the focus of a future blog post.

4. Can't a stutterer just slow down and think about what they want to say before they say it?
If it were that easy, I would not still stutter. Let me know if you need more clarification.

5. Should I try to finish your sentences?
No. Please don't. First of all, there's a good chance that you don't know what I am going to say. Second, if I've worked my ass off trying to get a word out, I at least want the satisfaction of saying it myself. Third, interrupting is rude.

6. What if I can't understand you?
Ask me to repeat myself. Say "what?" or "huh?" You won't offend me. You will offend me if you pretend to understand what I'm saying when you don't.

7. Can I make jokes about stuttering?
No, but I can, and it's a lot of fun. For instance, if I'm having a particularly difficult day, I will wait until someone says "huh" or "say again," and I will pretend to be offended and say "DID I STUTTER?" People don't know how to respond, and I get to laugh.

Actually, some people can make jokes. The people that can make jokes wouldn't want to. It's a beautiful catch 22.

8. So if I shouldn't finish your sentences or make fun of you, what should I do?
Listen patiently (or at least as patiently as you would with anyone else), let me know if you didn't understand me, and always feel free to ask questions.



If you have any other questions, post them in the comments. I look forward to answering them.

SpeechEasy

A few days ago, I was interviewed by stuttertalk.com about my experience with the SpeechEasy. In 2002, Good Morning America followed me as I tried the device out for the first time.

It was a miracle. I could talk. I went to Subway, and for once I got exactly what I wanted. I didn't pick ingredients that were easy to say. That may sound like a small thing, but when you have always settled for foods with easy-to-say names, it feels pretty damn good to get tuna on honey wheat with banana peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, mayonnaise, spicy mustard, American cheese, vinegar but not oil, and pepper but not salt. I was free.

I'm not exactly sure when I noticed that the device wasn't working for me, but it wasn't very long after my Subway "eureka" moment. At first, I began to notice the feedback that the device produced. It was sometimes hard to hear the person to whom I was talking, and I was all but deaf in public spaces. I knew that there would be an upgrade soon though, so I shrugged this off.

Soon, I noticed that I was stuttering more. I blamed myself. I was clearly not using the device correctly because anything that costs $5,000 must do what it claims to do. No. It wasn't me. It just didn't work.

My first thought was "how am I going to tell my family?" Everyone thought that Mark The Stutterer was gone. He was vanquished by science! In his place stood a confident, happy, silver tongued devil with the world at his fingertips.

I slowly stopped using the device without telling my family. I was away at college, so this was pretty easy. When they called, I would just say that the battery was dead or that I had just gotten out of the shower. It worked for about a month, but my mom eventually caught on.

She understood my reluctance to talk about the problems I was having with the device, but she pushed me to get in touch with the people at Janus. She said that they could help me.

I humored her for a little while before finally admitting what I had know for a while: the SpeechEasy device did not work.

The next 6 months were probably the worst of my life. My dream of being fluent had slipped through my fingers. I withdrew from friends, I stopped going to class, and I drank. I finished spring semester with a 0.5 GPA, and I was put on academic probation. I blamed everything but stuttering for my downward spiral. I refused to accept that I actually wanted to be fluent that much. The let down had crushed me.

That summer, I decided to rejoin the world. I bar backed at a local bar and made plans for the next school year. I contacted a few friends and even dated. I was going through the motions, but my heart wasn't in it. I was convinced that I would always be Mark The Stutterer and never Just Plain Mark. I had a built in glass ceiling. I tried not to take it too hard when my boss at the bar told me he wasn't going to give me the prime bartending job he had promised me because "I just couldn't talk to customers." He was right. Who would promote a guy like me?

Since then, I have struggled to convince myself that I can do all the things that Just Plain Mark can do. I married a beautiful girl, I graduated college, and I now spend my time racing bicycles and laying out and designing books for Deeds Publishing. My life isn't perfect, but its imperfections cannot be blamed on stuttering.

What was I saying? Oh yeah - SpeechEasy. Give it a try if you must, but don't get your hopes up.

Welcome

My name is Mark. I stutter. I don't like to talk about stuttering, but my stuttering is severe enough that it often becomes a topic of conversation. In this blog, I will talk about it openly. I will answer questions, I will post stories, and I will vent.

Thanks for reading.