Ask HN: Does anyone here suffer from a speech impediment?
I&#x27;ll split this into parts per your various questions.<p>=-0-=-0-=<p>&gt; Anyone here have a Speech Impediment?<p>In early public grade school [1st-4th grade after being first noticed during Kindergarten] I had to go to the school&#x27;s speech therapist; I had a speech stutter plus a mild lisp against the sound &quot;sh&quot; as in &quot;shut up&quot;, a worst lisp against the sound &quot;ch&quot; as in &quot;chimney&quot;, and a medium lisp against pronouncing the letter &quot;h&quot; as in &quot;e-f-g-H-i-j&quot; not the actual sound as in &quot;Hairy Henry&quot;.<p>Naturally, I hated being pulled out of class x3 a week for the speech therapy; it just screamed &quot;Hey that kid&#x27;s SPED&quot; (&quot;SPecial EDucation&quot;) and I knew it, and I also knew it wasn&#x27;t doing me any favors on making friends [the prospect of bullying for &quot;not talking right&quot; be damned, that just wasn&#x27;t a concern for me then against actual social interaction and social familiarity being time-limited -- don&#x27;t ask my how I understood this so early on, I just did]. When I switched schools in the middle of 4th grade, I still had to go to the speech therapy but then also the &quot;catch-up sessions&quot; for &quot;being academically behind&quot; too, so now I was forced to double-down on being pulled out of class. Not Good, as now I&#x27;m &quot;Double SPED&quot;. I had to get out of that crap and the sooner the better; I had to Be Normal [which became a Life Goal, as rational or irrational as you need that to be], especially as the New Kid who just switched schools in the middle of the bloody school year.<p>Before that school year ended, fortunately, I managed to talk my way out of continuing the speech therapy by explaining this &quot;SPED Stigma&quot; to the teachers, parents, and speech therapist involved [I realized the pun of phrasing it this way only 2-3 years ago, and decided to keep it for the telling here]. I got to skip the speech therapy for the rest of time and agreed to just grit my teeth through the Catch-Up sessions until summer came. Luckily enough I had &quot;caught up enough&quot; to be treated as a normal student from 5th grade onward. My stutter was an occasional treat instead of an Always Thing, and the &quot;sh&#x2F;&#x2F;ch&#x2F;&#x2F;h&quot; pronunciation issues were just what they were gonna be at that point with no additional helping to be had.<p>By University it was clear to me that my stutter was going to manifest itself when I was overly nervous, overly excited, or mentally impaired [e.g. migraines, booze]. That&#x27;s fine, no one cared or cares. For the pronunciations, guess what? One single person since 4th grade asked if I &quot;had a lisp&quot; and simply because he was honestly curious and we were cool at the time; if anyone else has ever noticed, they&#x27;ve kept their mouth shut to my face so that&#x27;s all whatever on that front.<p>I bought a copy of &quot;The King&#x27;s Speech&quot; after seeing it in theater. The scene with the record-player and headphones in the therapist&#x27;s office, and the climactic scene with the globally national radio address, are touching.<p>Last year I went to a ComicCon and quite randomly got an autograph from Matt Frewer... AKA Max Headroom. I mentioned that my olde speech therapist from grade school mentioned his character numerous times in attempts to get me to be comfortable and at-least be less self-conscious, and he mentioned how whatever the national &quot;speech therapist stutterers association of America&quot; group at the time kept calling in to the show with good will. He also gave an obligatory compliment toward how I spoke, which I of course very much appreciated. Yes, I promptly framed the autographed Max Headroom picture with no regrets.<p>&gt; What about your work, phone calls, and The Dread Pirate Presentations?<p>My work isn&#x27;t negatively influenced. Sure, I get nervous during presentations I have to give, but since I&#x27;m aware of my own stutter whilst nervous I add in the pauses and other mental gymnastics that can help my speech; I still get error but I&#x27;m ok with that for now. Still, no one cares enough to mention; I&#x27;m still not a card-carrying member of Toast Masters, but I do listen to The Moth.<p>I&#x27;ve never had problems with conference calls or meetings; sure I&#x27;ll double-up on stuff like &quot;... what, what about XYZ?&quot; or &quot;But that&#x27;s, what&#x27;s that gonna do about ABC?&quot;, but that&#x27;s normal enough conversationalist phrasing to not blip on most people&#x27;s radar and no one&#x27;s said anything to my face about it.<p>=-0-=-0-=<p>&gt; Work with people with speech issues?<p>I knowingly have not as far as my memory is concerned, but a few years ago I did interview at a place where one of the higher-ups who interviewed me did have a severe stutter. &quot;Stage 4&quot;, honestly speaking.<p>Obviously I was sympathetic and patient -- because of my above history, not necessarily because I was the on the short end of the power dynamic -- and asked for clarification on anything I just couldn&#x27;t understand from his stutter as if he had had a very heavy accent instead. He seemed used to such interaction and took it in stride. I still felt uncomfortable, a lot of it due to my sympathy and empathy for him; we both had no illusions about what was going on -- there&#x27;s a severe stutter here, he&#x27;s clearly making an effort to being understood, I&#x27;m clearly making an effort to understand, so let&#x27;s do this -- but since I was on the short end of the power dynamic I didn&#x27;t want to play the &quot;I just can&#x27;t understand you&quot; card every two minutes [yes I needed clarification at that frequency at a minimum if not sooner it was that bad].<p>Note: I wasn&#x27;t provided an offer for that gig but it had nothing to do with this guy&#x27;s stutter or my opposing behavior toward it; this was simply a Bad Fit all around and I have little regret over it.<p>The &quot;good news&quot; here is that at this company there&#x27;s a higher up who has a severe stutter; people clearly have the patience [or tolerance, or professionalism, or whatever thesaurus equivalent you want to use] to have this guy around creating value.