THE PETER PIPER PAPERS

    PETER PIPER WILL PICK PICKLED PEPPERS NO MORE

    A person with the nom de plume Stutterpuss should not forget to write about stuttering. Months have passed without me even mentioning it. If I don't write about stuttering again, I'm going to have to change the blog to either Garypuss, or Jewpuss, or, maybe Hairypuss (which would definitely get me hits on Google from a different kind of reader).

   There is so much more about the world of stuttering I want to share. Most books and articles about stuttering are more on the clinical side, and are written in hopes of helping to cure it. I want to show how much fun I've had despite stuttering, and how special and memorable my life has been because of it.

    With that said, there's one big question that begs to be asked. If there was a pill to stop me from stuttering, would I take it? The answer I would give now at 50 years old might be different from the answer I definitely would have given as a child. I would have done anything to not have to go to my school's Speech Therapist, Mr. Calahan, three times a week and face my arch enemy, Peter Piper.

   No one is reviled and feared by young stutterers more than that pecker Peter.

Judging by the presence
of a dragon on the cover,
Speech Therapy was
    not the most modern science  

Like most Speech Therapists in the Public Education System back when I was in elementary school, Mr. Calahan's techniques came from archaic textbooks. It made getting Speech Therapy in the 1960's like going to the dentist in the 1860's. Tongue-twisters were the greatest weapon Speech Therapists had in their arsenal. That bitch Sally Selling Seashells has remained a nemesis for generations of lispers. Only she comes close to the enduring infamy of Mr. Piper and his peppers. No other four spoken lines have ever caused as much embarrassment and dread as these:

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

 A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.

If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,

Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper         

picked?

 

    It was Mr. Calahan's anthem and became mine too. If I could say the whole verse without stuttering all would be solved. Peter Piper was Mr. Calahan's  favorite tool to help in his search to unearth the cure for stuttering. Finding the cure for stuttering has always been The Holy Grail of Speech Therapy. For thousands of years, people have futilely searched for the answer that Mr. Calahan was supposed to somehow find in his windowless office that also served as a storage room for the Principle's paper supplies.

    The secretaries who worked for the Principle would come in without knocking and look for what they needed as I sat across from Mr. Calahan's desk stuttering on 'pickled peppers' or some other 'P','T','Y', 'L' or 'M'. I was ashamed to be heard by them, but Mr. Calahan would pretend they weren't there and make me continue as they looked in my direction from the corners of their eyes.     He had figured out what consonants were the hardest for me to say and he tailor-made difficult sentences, often using my brother's and sister's names. "Mitchell and Melissa made many marshmallow milkshakes for Memorial Day." And sometimes he would use my mother's. " Priscilla packaged pounds of plum preserves" (He must have been talking about Peter Piper's mother, not mine.)

    Mr. Calahan also knew I had an especially difficult time saying 'you' and 'to', which are unfortunately two of the most common words in the English language.  I would substitute 'for' instead of 'to', as in ,"I'm going for the movies" or "I'm going for the store", but he would catch me, just like he would catch me saying "a day from now" instead of "tomorrow", or "a day ago" instead of "yesterday". He would wag his finger each time and in his soft-spoken voice would say," No switching," and then make me go back and say everything the right way. The same went for whenever he caught me 'masking', which referred to any body movements or gestures I used to hide a stutter. He didn't care how many times I had to repeat a sentence or how long each stutter lasted. If he was ever frustrated or bored, he never showed it. He had more patience and was more attentive than any other male teacher or relative of mine, and most female ones too.

    But there was a creepy side to all the attention he gave me. I felt it most when he would roll his chair from his side of the desk to my side, and bring his face close to mine, making me mimic his mouth movements as I repeated what he said. He would click his teeth together as he pronounced sentences, which I then did too. It was supposed to prevent me from locking my jaw when I stuttered, but it was very distracting both to watch him do and to do it myself. It sounded like I was shivering, but in a very slow,methodical way. He would put his fingers on my jaw to make sure I wasn’t locking it while I read out loud. After a few minutes of that, we would do some exercising. But it wasn't like exercising in gym class. We would stay in our chairs and I would follow him in a routine of strange lizard-like facial movements, clenching and unclenching our mouths and neck muscles like older women do in front of mirrors to keep from wrinkling. Then to end each treatment session, he would do a magic trick.  

      “Relax your throat so the penny can fall out. I have to feel the air first before I can get it,” he would say, touching my lips with three fingers together.            A penny would appear from in between his thumb and fingers and he would look at it with the same expression of exaggerated surprise he'd been using every time he did the trick, which was the same one he did for two years. The penny appearing at the end turned out to be the only part of Mr. Calahan's Speech Therapy sessions that was guaranteed to work. No other magic happened. When the two years were over, a few dollars in pennies was the only thing I had to show for all the time spent with Mr. Calahan. Even if I was able to give him a perfect Peter Piper, by the time I walked down the hallway back to class, I was stuttering again.

                                               
                                                 ***

 THE MERCILESS REIGN OF PETER PIPER AND SALLY SEASHELLS WILL END ONE DAY..

Peter Piper's parachute

purposely packed with pickled peppers

plummeted fast past

passing piloted planes.

       

  A sizable tsunami 

sent sharks sailing

      towards the seashore 

to swallow Sally and her seashells 

for supper.