KICK,KICK,STOMP,STOMP, ONE,TWO, CHA,CHA CHA. PART 1

 I hate being watched when I'm stuttering. How a stutter looks is even worse than how it sounds. It's far more of an assault on the eyes than it is on the ears. Stuttering is not that cute little thing Porky Pig does. That's called stammering, which is a playful, bouncy way of repeating a sound over and over again like, " f-f-f-fuck you P-P-Porky P-P-Pig ". Stuttering is the quiet, ugly sibling of stammering. The words get stuck in the vice grip of the muscular folds in my voice-box. To help get a word out, I sometimes have to throw my whole body into it. Heel stomping, chair kicking, thigh punching, table tapping, head bobbing, eye twitching, neck whipping, shoulder jerking, whatever it takes. For a few really bad stutters, I've had to bounce up and down like I was on an invisible pogo stick. It's Modern Dance at it's most primal with choreography that even Martha Graham couldn't follow. 
    I only allow myself the luxury of punching, kicking and bouncing if I'm alone on the phone when no one can see how gymnastic a stutterer can get. I actually have to be careful not to injure myself by kicking something too hard or bruising a limb. The worst is when I whip my head back and forth too quickly and a contact lenses flies out. It doesn't get more humiliating than that, especially when I had to ask for help to find it. Only my family and my boyfriends have witnessed my stutter in full throttle. It is something I hope they've blocked out of their minds, like they would do if they had seen their grandparents having sex, or another vision equally as disturbing. Being caught in the throws of a major stutter is probably the only thing that can still embarrass me. It has the power to immediately make me feel like I'm six years old again.  
    I tell you this because I am facing a great challenge right now. For 20 years I have loved working in Physical Therapy. I've helped thousands of people learn to stand and walk again, straightening out God's spitefulness one patient at a time. I couldn't think of a better job in the world for me. Except for one thing. Part of my job is to be a Clinical Instructor for an intern from a Physical Therapy Assistant college. In simple terms, this means someone who will watch me stutter eight hours a day for two months. It's what I've been dreading all these years, what I've finagled my way out of for two decades,and what has now finally caught up with me. For my own good, my Supervisor is taking a stand and won't let me weasel out of it this year. ( Remind me to sue her for making me do this as soon as I have time to find the clause in The Handicap Rights Act pertaining to cruel and unusual punishment, or was that The Constitution?)
    I've learned to use my stutter around the patients as positively as I can. I hold it up as my way of being ' perfectly imperfect ', and use myself as an example of having a great life even with a speech problem when my patients  are emotionally struggling over not walking or talking as good as they used to. Luckily, some of the patients who can't see or hear too well along with some of the ones who have brain injuries don't even realize I am stuttering. It also helps when the patients are still in bed, where they can't see how  I sometimes stomp on my own foot or kick myself in the shin to help get a stutter out.
   I'm not going to be able to get away with any of my stuttering strategies  when the intern is watching me, hanging on my every word. It's bad enough having the patients see my eyelids fluttering, jaw jutting and head bobbing when I'm stuck on a sound. Now I'm going to have a third party watching it all! I can only imagine how horrified the intern is going to be. I just hope I don't stomp on her foot instead of mine while I'm trying to say something to her.