CAT GOT MY TONGUE IN PAWTUCKET

Tongue Tied  Misery

Just finished reading a book  by Benson Bobrick about the history of stuttering and attempts to treat it.  The author ends in the last section by  telling his own tale of  struggle with the affliction of stuttering.  This book which I must have purchased and read several years ago  brought me  back to the memory of my own history of stuttering. and I decided to write a narrative and not stay hidden even to myself in the stuttering closet..

 I realized that as an adult I have  very rarely mentioned or told anyone that I  stuttered for the years of my childhood.  I try not  to think of it -it was extremely mysterious to me both in its inception and its conclusion.  I am afraid of it on some deep level, and I was not sure of any of the facts of stuttering. As a child no one ever spoke to me about it although they did attempt to cure it--unsuccessfully.
  
I don't remember my mother or anyone at home making comments about my speech,  In fact they exclaimed with pride when the first word I said as a baby was BOOK! But as soon as I started in the kindergarten at Prospect Street School they said that I had  a speech problem. And I knew that I did: I had trouble with A VERY SPECIFIC CONSONANT--I COULD NOT EASILY SAY ANY WORD THAT BEGAN WITH  M.

Funny to admit, I found  one hard piece of evidence of a "compensation" that I resorted to  in the Saint Patrick's Day Program that surfaced recently.  It seems that one song was sung by someone called Clumpy. I was startled when I saw  it written in my  hand--I had  "Forgotten" that I called my mother Clumpy.  Why? Because every night she told repeatedly the story of a movie called ELEPHANT WALK to my sister Sheila.  And I  could hear her imitating the sound of the Elephant  She would call out CLUMP! CLUMP!  CLUMP! Well that was how I justified the substitution  of Clumpy for Ma, Mommy, Mother  or even Margaret. I hated using it because she hated it.  But at least it allowed me to address my mother without seeing the horror in her face as she turned and watched and waited as I struggled to  produce the M-words.

So I began to be sent out of the classroom to  meet the speech therapist who  came to help us improve our speech. We were a motley crew--some were the students who could not yet read or write.  Some  looked dirty and disheveled, sat with bowed heads, and being put in that company dismayed me.  Because both of my sisters had Down Syndrome, I wondered why I did not have it and  I expected retardation to show  up any day in my life as well. 
Here it is--I remember thinking when I went to the Speech sessions.  The therapist was a man, and he seemed to believe that stuttering was about tongue action because he  put us through a regimen of tongue exercises. At one point he  put  his hand into my mouth to grab my tongue.  Something fierce in me refused  this invasive move and I clamped down my jaw and bit him hard.  I  think that he yelled aloud and hit me slightly. I am not sure, but he sent me to the principal's office . No one was there, and they sent me to my class and my teacher  asked me what had  happened and I could not speak--I  was crying. And she made me go and stand in the cloakroom. ( For any younger reader-the cloakroom was a sort of closet with coat hooks off the classroom where we left our coats and were often sent for that era's version of time out.) 

After what seemed like a long time,  the principal came in to see me.  "How can a smart girl with books all over her dress be in the cloakroom?"  I turned and looked down at the dress I was wearing which my mother had sewn for me and  whose fabric  was a design of open books with letters showing. It was my favorite. 
"I bit the finger of the speech teacher. I am  very stupid--"
"No, you are the only child in kindergarten who can already read and write."
She sent me back into the classroom and that was the end of speech therapy.  I did not dare tell anyone at home what I had done.
Instead I started longing to be in another school away from my sisters.  In the tradition of manipulation I began telling my mother that I wanted to go to a Catholic School, I knew that would please her. I also asked my father and said that I was  teased about my sisters. And next year--halfway through  the first grade I was switched to Saint Joseph's School.