THE PETER PIPER PAPERS: STUTTERVILLE PART II

                         
   

       There are currently 3,149,318 stutterers stuttering in this country. In 1982 when I went to The Hollins Institute in Virginia, the overall population of The United States was almost 80 million people less than today and there were only 2,316,664 stutterers, including myself. Oddly, I had no idea who and where the other 2,316,663 were. Up to that point, I had not come across even one of my stuttering brethren. Somehow, over two million of them had managed to elude me. It seemed, at the time, that there was a better chance of me coming across Big Foot.    

Towns used to have
the Town Crier, 
never to be confused 
with the Town Stutterer.

      It felt like there had been a force field around me that kept all other stutterers away. Wherever I went, I was always the only one who stuttered. Moving to new neighborhoods and changing school districts didn't help. The job of Town Stutterer was always waiting for me. It was a job that seemed to be solely mine for the simple reason that no other stutterers ever showed up to take the position for themselves. I couldn't quit or get fired from it, and it always traveled with me.

This held true from elementary school all the way through college and after, when I went to work full-time as a stuttering salesman at my family's used fur store.

     Thousands of women from all over the city and tourists visiting New York from around the country and abroad came to shop at our store each year. Among all these women were customers with every conceivable handicap you can imagine. Blind women, deaf women, women in wheelchairs without legs, other women without arms, midgets and giantesses. Every kind of woman except the one kind of woman I hoped would come in to buy a fur--- a stuttering one.  Destiny, it again seemed, would not let me meet my first stutterer. It made me wait until I flew all the way to Roanoke, Virginia. This is because Destiny is an asshole sometimes. But Destiny always has its reasons.

                            Welcome to the

                      ' MEET and R-R-REPEAT '      

        
       Each of our video interviews had been shot by the head speech therapist Ross individually and at different times, so I had not yet met any of the other stutterers who were there for the course too. We were all invited to a 'Meet and Greet' back at the Hollins Institute later that evening, which I decided to go to instead of deciding to kill myself after being forced to bear witness to the horror of what my stutter actually looked like on video.

    After waiting 21 years, the prospect of finally meeting other stutterers was overwhelming. For years I had tried to picture what my first encounter with another stutterer would be like, but not once did I imagine that instead of one stutterer it would be with a whole group of them.

    On the walk back over to the Institute, I envisioned the intense connections I was about to have and the life-long friendships I would be leaving Virginia with at the end of the three weeks with people who I hadn't even met yet. I already had plenty of friends back in New York and felt very loved, especially by my boyfriend at the time, Scott ( who has been my best friend for 34 years). But deep down I always felt that I was missing something important by not also having friends who actually understood my life as a stutterer.

     Only stutterers understand the  different levels of hope and desperation we go through, the amount of anxiety we carry, the comedy we have to create, the humiliation we have to ignore, the constant preparation and effort we have to make, the strategies we have to consider, and the tricks and compensations we invent and use. I also wanted a friend who could understand and appreciate the simple, great thrill stutterers sometimes enjoy when we get out difficult words. No fluent-speaking person in my life, not even Scott, could possibly understand these feelings, no matter how much they loved me. 

     I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I was also looking forward to, for the first time in my life,  seeing people stutter in front of me. I wanted to see what it looked like and how it sounded when other people did it. And on a more egotistical level, I was dying to see how similar I was to the other stutterers, and if there was at least one other stutterer who was just like me. Exactly how many gay, Jewish stutterers who were loud, funny, and sexy were out there in the world? And was there going to be any at the 'Meet and Greet' besides me? 

      From the moment I left my hotel room I was staring at random people in the elevator, downstairs in the lobby, and on the sidewalks wondering who amongst them were my fellow stutterers  heading towards the 'Meet and Greet' too. Of course it was impossible to figure out. Even a stutterer can't spot another stutterer just in passing. If you see a person coming towards you with a long, white cane you can pretty much assume they are blind; you can also usually spot deaf people in advance if they're doing sign language while crossing the street ignoring the loud sirens of ambulances and fire engines coming towards them. But there is nothing to help you spot a stutterer strolling down the street until we actually try to speak. That's what is so tricky about us ---we look and seem perfectly normal ---until we open our mouths. 
    
                                                   *                                                                                           

        As I was opening the door to the Conference Room I realized I was about to step into the first room, out of every room I had ever stepped into my entire life, where I was not going to be the only stutterer. I closed my eyes for the moment it took to press together all the memories of the thousands and thousands of rooms I had been in and the thousands and thousands of people I stuttered at who never stuttered back at me.

     The closest I had ever gotten to what I was feeling at that moment when I saw all the stutterers together was the first time I stepped into a gay bar, named Chances, four years earlier when I was seventeen and under-aged, armed with a fake I.D. and a big smile. There was the similar long overdue feeling of safety that comes from sharing something in common with a group of people. Walking into a room full of stutterers made me feel even safer. I might not have been able to use my good looks to protect myself as much as I did at a gay bar, but for the first time in my life I wasn't going to be judged by strangers for stuttering.

      All the chairs had been removed and none of the staff was there. The only things in the room was a table with different kinds of drinks against one wall and a podium with a white board on the wall in back of it that read:  

                                     Meet and Greet-6:00 P.M.

                                Introduction to Precision Fluency Shaping Program

                                                 by Dr. Ronald Webster- 7:00 P.M.

       The situation seemed to be intentionally set up for us to mingle and introduce ourselves to each other, something that stutterers generally don't rush to do. Without seats to escape into or staff to listen to, there was more pressure for us to start talking. 

    

                     MEET & GREETS FOR STUTTERERS USUALLY 

                TAKE A LITTLE MORE TIME TO GET THE PARTY STARTED.

   It started out silently with a lot of smiles and nods and cup sipping. This strategy lasted for a few minutes, and then something surprising started to happen. Being amongst ourselves emboldened some of my fellow stutterers to start conversations. I started hearing a few isolated stutters, like the first few kernels of Jiffy-Pop popcorn that pop before most of the others start popping. Soon almost everyone was 'popping', taking advantage of the chance to show-off their stutters for the first time instead of trying to hide them. 

    What was and still remains one of the most fascinating things about stuttering is that every individual person's stutter is caused by the same faulty physical mechanism (whatever that elusive cause might be), yet each of us has developed our own original convulsive choreography to deal with it, along with facial gestures and repetitive movements that made each of our stutters totally unique. I tried describing this back in September 2011 in KICK,KICK,STOMP,STOMP, ONE and TWO and CHA,CHA,CHA part 1    '...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..'  Some stutters were spectacular to watch, others were heartbreaking to see; others were bordering on comical, and the self-flagellation of a few looked painful.

    Serving beverages to a group of stutterers was not the safest idea. Hot coffee or tea was especially dangerous when being held by a person with a stutter on the more 'athletic' side. The pile of napkins on the table was gone in half an hour, and wherever I turned, someone was dabbing up a spill from either the carpet or their clothes.        

    I hadn't said one word to anyone yet because I was so enthralled with just listening and watching. Each conversation I eavesdropped on turned out to be about Ross and the video-taping. Apparently, every stutterer there was as shell-shocked as I was over being filmed. The video-taping had had a demoralizing effect on the whole group, which was probably Ross' intention. He wanted to strip us of any tolerance of our stutters and reinvigorate our senses of humiliation and embarrassment that might have gotten lazy over the years, no matter how bad some of our stutters were. As long as he could make us hate our stutters and make getting rid of them our top priority, he didn't mind us hating him too. 

    Some of the stutterers there had heard stories about Ross even before they arrived. It turned out that Ross' unwavering stoic seriousness was legendary; according to stuttering folklore he was once a severe stutterer himself, a fact  which I myself can't confirm or dispute. The one thing I could confirm was that the whole group seemed to be quickly bonding over our mutual and immediate dislike of Ross. This goes to show that nothing can unite people faster than sharing a common handicap or hatred.

     The big question everyone had for each other was what words were the most difficult to say on the video. An older man (which to me back then meant someone in his late forties) with silver in his hair and beard, explained that his worst stutter happened when Ross asked him his profession. The man curled in his lips together and squeezed his eyelids shut each time he tried to get out the word "paleoanthropologist", which he was finally able to puff out of his mouth after his lips gave way and opened.

    Another man not as old and a little less distinguished looking held his hand up in the air in a fist moving it up and down over and over like he was pulling on a broken cord trying to get a bus to stop. He was also snapping back his head at the same quick speed like he was catching peanuts being thrown rapid-fire at his mouth. "My name," he finally said. After that he had to tell us his name,which took almost 45 seconds. His lips looked sewn together as he tried to say the 'B' of Bartholomew, which unfortunately he was named.  And then he had to tell us that he went by 'Barry' instead, which took him almost as long as Bartholomew. 
     Like all stutterers, I knew the words and sounds that were my nemesis. This meant when Ross asked what the names of my family members were, I went into a free-fall of stuttering on the video. 
    "M's and P's are my worst," I jumped in, smiling at the little group. "And  my brother's name is Mitchell, my sister's name is Melissa and my mother's name is Priscilla." I said the entire sentence without one stutter, including the three names, which I had never been able to do in my entire life. "That's funny. I can't believe I didn't stutter on them," I said , not stuttering at all again. I rolled my eyes and laughed a little. "Wait, this is impossible. 'Mitchell,Melissa, Priscilla. Mitchell, Melissa, Priscilla, " I repeated, trying to make myself stutter. " That's so weird. I always stutter on them," I said bewildered and embarrassed by my sudden and unwanted fluency.
  " Are you being serious or is this a joke," the bearded man asked.
   "No, of course not. I'm being serious," I said with perfect speech. "Here, watch, 'F's' and 'W's' are bad too. Fedora, philharmonic, wisteria, warlock, water-polo, Fifty-five," I said  flawlessly. None of the men were smiling or finding it amusing in any way. " I don't know what's wrong, "  I said in all seriousness, for the first time in my life panicking that I wasn't stuttering. " This has never happened before."  Desperate to stutter at least once as proof to them, I started throwing out any words that I could think of that were hard for me to say. " Bewitched, molasses, marmalade , metamorphosis, mercury, Madame Curie, Tennessee Williams,  Mount Vesuvius, Pompei, potato, tomato, "  I rattled off without a hitch. Even 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow,' two words that to this day I avoid saying, came out easily. "This is so crazy. My speech is never as good as this,"  I tried to laugh it off again as the men turned their backs on me.
    My stutter, as usual, betrayed me, appearing when I don't want it to and vanishing the few times when I need it. That's how spiteful a stutter can be. I looked around and realized that I was the only one not talking to anyone. I was in the middle of the room all by myself. It horrified me for a moment until I remembered that I hate groups anyway.
  
      
     

THE PETER PIPER PAPERS: STUTTERVILLE PART I

                         

        Sure, back in elementary school there were some success stories of other young stutterers who were actually cured by public school Speech Therapists. I call these kids 'The Impostors', the ones who grew out of stuttering at an early age like other kids grew out of bed-wetting. Stuttering was merely a phase to them, not the life-long companion it has been for me. Let's get one thing straight, Impostors: You are not a stutterer if you grow out of it; you are only a stutterer if you grow up with it.

          

     There appears to exist a cut-off when curing a stutter becomes much more difficult. That's why the Public Schools System offers free Speech Therapy only until the end of sixth grade. Mr. Calahan and his horrible accomplice, Peter Piper, loose their power and puberty arrives to take control. The great powers of Adolescence either triumph over a stutter or lock it in place. Obviously, my stutter had no plans of leaving. It stuck with me all the way through junior high school and graduated high school with me. It decided to stay to celebrate my legally becoming an adult at 18, and insisted on being right there when I ordered my first drink from a bartender at 21. My stutter had done the unthinkable --it entered my adulthood with me. I had become an undeniable member of the group I call Adults with Stubborn Stutters, or ASSs. 

     Every generation of  ASSs have their own  specialists, practitioners, professionals, nonprofessionals, and quacks, each thinking they will be the one to find the elusive cure for stuttering. Doctors have tried to electroshock the stutter out of us, shrinks have tried to analyze it out of us, acupuncturists have tried to needle it out of us, hypnotists have tried to trick it out of us, gurus have tried to relax it out of us. Hookers have even tried to fuck our stutters out of us. 


   Actually, there was a brief period when I wasn't an ASS , if you can imagine. It was 1982, the year when the impossible suddenly seemed possible. The Precision Fluency Shaping Program, or PFSP, claimed  a 75-90% success rate in its treatment of stutttering, with filmclips of patients to prove it. After doing the program, stutterers could read The Declaration Of Independence in the same amount of time it had taken them to just say their name, address  and phone number before they took the program.  T.V. correspondent John Stossel first broke the news of the treatment on a segment of 20/20 when he himself stopped stuttering after doing The Fluency Program.  This got the attention of ASSs everywhere. It was the biggest news to hit the stuttering community since Marilyn Monroe was added to the Top Ten List Of Stutterers.
     By the time I got the nerve to call the PFSP and register, all the available spaces had been booked in advance for a year and a half. The waiting list was filled as well. My father, Bernie, was even more disappointed than I was. He was outraged that I would have to wait so long. He wanted me to call back and stutter worse, in case they accepted applicants on the basis of how badly they stuttered, like hospitals did with patients who needed organ transplants. 
     I had always felt a little sorry for my father having to be my parent. In Freudian terms, having a son who is both gay and a stutterer makes it look like he must have somehow really fucked up as a father. I wondered if he ever felt judged by other fathers whose sons were more normal.  To my father's credit, he never outwardly expressed any disappointment or embarrassment he might have had over my speech problem, or even over the fact that I was gay. If he had these feelings he did a good job at hiding them, which was one of the things that I realize now actually made him a better father than most. This did not mean he wasn't excited over the possibility of me not stuttering anymore. He was ready to pay the $3000  for the program on the spot, and wrote out the check to prove it. 
     " Mail it to them anyway. There's no way any business would not  deposit a three thousand dollar check for something they're trying to sell. This way if they cash it, they'll have to put you ahead of the other stutterers. Trust me."
    I had no guilt over my father paying for the PFSP. He probably spent almost as much money every month just eating at restaurants. If he could spend it so easily on a lamb chop, he certainly should spend it on me. In a way it served him right for being a little too excited about the possibility of having a son who didn't stutter anymore.
      I figured that the high cost of the Program was one of the best things about it. My reasoning was that if all the free Speech Therapy I was given in elementary school never motivated me enough, maybe Speech Therapy that wasn't free would motivate me more. The more expensive it was, the higher the stakes were raised. I wouldn't have any other choice but  to take it seriously.
    I promised my father it would be the best three thousand he ever spent. I assured him that even though I hated Speech Therapy in the past, this time it would be different. After all, I was 21 and more mature, a man ready to focus and succeed. Or so I believed at the time.
                                                  
                                 STUTTERVILLE
      
     Tech geeks move to Silicone Valley, cripples make pilgrimages to Lourdes, but if you're a stutterer, there's still only one place to go. Hollins Communications Research Institute is located Roanoke, Virginia  and is the place where stutterers from all over the world have to travel to for the Precision Fluency Shaping Program.
      Almost overnight, John Stossel made Roanoke famous, and a steady stream of stutterers have continued to arrive for over 30 years, spending a steady stream of money. If you own a store in Roanoke, odds are a stutterer has bought something from you, not to mention all the extra business hotels and restaurants have gotten.
     When I got to the taxi stand outside the baggage claim at Roanoke Airport and started to stutter on the name of the Institute, the taxi driver held up his hand and interrupted me.
         " Don't trouble yourself, young man. I know where you're heading to," he grinned and put my suitcase in the trunk. He didn't try to make any small talk the entire ride, which was his way of telling me that he understood why I might not have been interested in conversations with strangers. When he handed me my suitcase he wished me luck too. "They get good results. I hear it myself when they talk to each other in the backseat."
      I thanked him and grinned back, feeling a strange combination of relief and embarrassment that he knew I was there because I stuttered. It was a feeling I would have for the next three weeks as I interacted with a town full of strangers who all seemed to know why I was there.
                                                 
       The first thing the head Speech Therapist, Ross, did was to take a VHS video of me answering basic questions. I had never been filmed talking, so I had no idea what I actually looked like when I stuttered. As Ross asked me questions, I tried my best not to stutter. A few of the answers I gave were really funny, but he didn't laugh once. All in all, I  thought I actually controlled my stutter pretty well, which I told Ross when he asked me how I did.

    " O.K., let's see it, " he said, not agreeing or disagreeing with my assessment. He rewound the video and played it back for me on a TV monitor. What I experienced was the most horrifying and embarrassing five minutes of my life. Every stutter showed, even the smallest ticks that I thought I was hiding. My head bobbed, my eyelids fluttered, my mouth contorted, and my chin kept cocking up like I was trying to sneeze but couldn't. Ross, totally unmoved, watched while I looked at myself in disbelief. I wanted to run and lock myself away and never 

open my mouth again. I couldn't believe that I actually went through life making such grotesque, painful faces every time I talked to people. I thought of my boyfriend Scott immediately. How did he ever fall in love with me after he saw me stutter? A feeling of absolute humiliation completely filled me. The realization that almost every person I had ever spoken to had seen my face twist and contort and my head jerk and freeze was so overwhelming that I had to block it out of my mind so I wouldn't totally fall apart.

        I couldn't bear to look up at Ross after he turned on the lights when the video ended. I never wanted to lift my head and look at anyone again. My illusion of myself was shattered. 
    " Worse than you thought?" Ross asked matter-of-fact without any sympathy.
      I nodded in my chair looking at my feet.
    " It usually is. That's how the ego protects us. It's the ego's number one job, to not let us see how things really look sometimes. Unfortunately it also keeps us from acting sooner. But now you know what it looks like and where you stand."  He stood up from his desk and opened the door, ending our first meeting abruptly so he could film the next stutterer who was waiting after me.
     I was shocked that he was letting me leave without saying something to make me feel better. " Do stutterers normally leave your office and kill themselves right away, or do they wait a few hours? " I asked him as I stood up. 
   " Any stutterers who are strong enough to make it this far don't kill themselves." Ross said, ignoring my attempt to zing him.
    " How about saying something encouraging to me after that video instead of just letting me leave?" I looked him right in the eyes as I stood in the doorway.
    " I just did," he smirked, looking me right back in my eyes. " Be ready to work tomorrow."
      He didn't care if I said good bye or not, so I just turned and walked out of the office.
      I couldn't make him laugh or feel bad for me or give me any kind of a compliment. He was intentionally serious and wasn't going to be impressed with anything except hard work. 
     It was definitely going to be the longest three weeks of my life. 

                                  CONTINUED...

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. 

" DOT'S MY PRESIDENT! "

                                       LUCKY 44

HIT ME LIKE YOU MEAN IT!

    My pageview total  was 9,992  when I left my apartment for two hours, but I thought there would still be time for me to be the ten thousandth hit. The plan was I would switch my tracking program to include my computer for that one time so my hit would be counted too. I wanted to make it special because I wouldn't be experiencing that many zeros again until 20, 000, which is going to take alot more stutterpussing.
   When I got back home and sat down to write, I discovered that 13 awful, horrible, cruel people  had viewed Stutterpuss while I was out,  and my number of hits was at 10,005.  My moment of triumph was gone and I missed it!
   Whoever you are, number 10,000, I trust you realized the significance of such a number and  enjoyed the moment at least a little bit for me.  I want to express my thanks to you and to everyone else who keeps viewing my blog. I'll never know who a lot of you readers are, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't hit me whenever you want. The more hits I get, the happier I am. I never thought being hit would feel SO good.   Gary
 

EARLY TURN - OUT

      SANDRA S.STORM: REGISTERED DEMOCRAT 

   When Super Storm Sandy turned out to cast her vote a week before the presidential election, she made an unusual change in her path, sharply veering left (both literally and figuratively) instead of making a typical right turn out to sea. That put her perpendicular to the most densely populated stretch of the Northeastern coastline. It was time for some blue states to feel nature's fury. New York and New Jersey were going to have to prove they were as tough as they always acted.

    A direct hit to the center of President Obama's base of support meant that he would finally get the chance to come to the rescue of storm victims who actually don't hate him. Usually, he winds up having to console southern Republicans after their houses blow away to Oz. Some of these same folks still think Obama is the Devil's son even after he helps them. This time, it was New Yorkers and New Jerseyans who earned the honor of a Presidential Hug. It's a hug that you talk about for the rest of your life; a moment of intimate contact with greatness that has the power to make you a little greater too. 

    The storm victims, however, were not the only ones who couldn't keep their hands off Obama. After an entire day of Chris Christie watching Obama interact with such tireless grace and gentle authority, and seeing the President's genuine care, the seriousness of his concern, the hugeness of his heart, and the power of his charm, the Republican Governor apparently was starting to feel the overwhelming need to hug the President too.
                    
                                                  *

    It all started off cordially enough with a professional handshake and a walk to Mariner One with Christie keeping his hands in his pockets. 

 

They took to the air to discuss serious matters face-to-face and knee-to-knee (this was probably when the Cabin Steward slipped an ecstasy pill into Christie's beverage, which could be one of the explanations for the Governor's touchy-feeliness.) 

But by the end of the day it looked painful for them to separate.

    

                                   

       Look at this happy couple. You could easily mistake them for a well-mannered black nerd taking a fat white lesbian to The Prom where they were voted Prom King and Queen. Obama is smiling so hugely because he knows he just won the upcoming election. Christie is smiling because he just made Romney lose the election and positioned himself as the only Republican above politics who's word will never be doubted and who's character never questioned when he runs for the Presidency in 2016. Some believe that Christie Creme ruined his career, but they'll eventually have to admit what Rice Christie knows already, that there is now no Republican with a better chance of winning than him. 

     The bear-hug he gave Obama squeezed the breath out of every die-hard Republican in the country. The Romney camp went crazy over Christie committing the ultimate sacrilege.

              GOP accuses Christie of GOP

                      ( Gushing  Over  President )

   The praise that Christie, being a Republican, gave the President, a Democrat, is truly stunning considering how dysfunctional politics are in this country. One of the only things more stunning is the fact that it is stunning. It is also stunning that a hug is being called heresy by some people, and it is equally stunning that it is being called heroic by others. What is even more stunning is that it might very well make Chris Christie the 45th President of The United States. 

    Governor Christie somehow managed to make himself even bigger, so to speak, than the man he is, while at the same time making Mit Romney even smaller a man than he already was. Christie became even bigger than Sandy. With all the devastation and havoc she caused, Sandy was still only considered to be a Category-1 hurricane because of winds only 90 miles /hour. That's nothing compared to the speed the news of and the havoc caused by Chris Christie embracing President Obama with the first ever-recorded Category-5 bear-hug with repercussions that could be felt for years to come.
    

                                                  ***

       

    It's commonly accepted knowledge that San Francisco is overdue for a major earthquake. If I survive it but have suffered sufficiently, I will be entitled to a Presidential Hug. I only want that hug to come from President Obama though, so the earthquake better happen within the next four years. If it doesn't happen by the start of 2017, it better not happen for a while.  I'd rather be crushed by a building than be crushed by a bear-hug from President Christie Creme.

     

   STUTTERVILLE continues in around two weeks

LANDSLIDE 2012 !!!

                                               OBAMACALM

     Four things I have in common with Barack Obama are that we were both born in 1961, we are both left-handed, we are both hated by rednecks, and we both voted for the same person for President. 

      Unfortunately, the things I do not have in common with Barack Obama make up a much longer list. Near the top of this list is the difference between the levels of calm that Obama and I each exude. Admittedly, my level of calm is on the low side. It could even be said that overall, I am basically not calm. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I am what I call uncalm, which is the complete opposite of calm, making it more severe than if I was just simply not calm. Being uncalm renders me incapable of sitting still in any seat, enjoying long or even short rowboat rides, birdwatching (which I've actually never done), praying for longer than 10 seconds, or taking any yoga class because I will absorb all the freed thoughts that everyone else around me has cleared their minds of.

    Recognizing my own uncalmness makes me acutely aware of the presence and degree of other people's calmness. This is what makes the President so amazing to me. He is not just calm. He is a level above calm. He is Obamacalm.    

     This Zen-like Obamacalm never wavers or falters, even when we think it will or wish it would. It seems to be his natural state, not something forced or affected, and is one of his most well-tested and dependable attributes. You don't have to know him personally or even be near him to sense it. It comes in perfectly clear over the airwaves for everyone to see and hear.  

OBAMA LAMA

       I try to envision the Barack Obama that we never see. I imagine him more playful and sexy than he allows himself to be in public. When he and Michelle are laying in bed watching CNN and the Minority Leader of the Senate comes on to accuse the President of being unwilling to compromise, how do Barack and Michelle react? I picture them looking at each other dumbfounded and then laughing as they throw either  Barack's slippers or Michelle's panties at Mitch McConnell's face on the screen. I hope that every time Senator McConnell comes on the air, Barack and Michelle make sure to have sex right in front of the TV, because nothing would bother a white southern Republican more than a black President fucking the First Lady in The White House.

         Dealing with McConnell and the rest of the Republicans in Congress during The President's first term has been a great testament to the power of Obamacalm. Time after time, I've had to sit and watch the President get stomach-punched by the GOP. Like so many other Democrats, I've been both astonished and frustrated by the amount of ill-will lobbed at him and how much of it he is able to ignore, while still trying to reach across the isle. Somehow he has maintained a level-headed, open-handed willingness to work with a Republican Party that ' has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition' ( as described by Norm Ornstein in an article perfectly titled 'Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem').

       Out of all the Machiavellian maneuvering and obstructing tactics the Republicans concocted to thwart President Obama, I have been most stunned by their acceptance of lying as a legitimate form of campaigning. Being a Republican used to mean you didn't have to be concerned about the environment, education, health care, the poor, the homeless, minority rights, the arts, and whatever children need after they aren't aborted. Now it seems being a Republican means you also don't have to care about the truth. From the top down, the Republican Party has mastered the language of claiming to be doing exactly the opposite of what they are actually doing. 
      As a Democrat, it's been infuriating to listen to the increasingly absurd transparency of lies spouted from the shared blow-hole of the GOP leadership. Republican politicians started to realize that lying about facts wasn't going to disqualify them from the race, and that if they say a lie enough times it becomes the truth. And if the lie is lucky enough to resonate, it becomes a soundbite. A good soundbite  is so valuable to Republicans because they are inflammatory without having to be explanatory, and it's easier than actual facts for their voters to remember. Republican campaigns are less about recruiting new converts than it is about energizing their base, who don't mind hearing lies from their politicians as long as they are the lies that protect the agenda of the party. Republican politicians have two conversations, one that tells what they want to do, like stopping abortion and gay marriage, and the other conversation is the kind that masks what they really want to do, like all the new voter I.D. rules to prevent non-existent voter fraud. The way they get away with it is by somehow getting the entire GOP to go along with the lie, without anyone breaking ranks. They all read from the same playbook, which seems to be written in invisible ink. It's a script that uses sacred words like ' reform' and 'improve' but not their true meanings. This is where the exquisite lie lies. And this is where Mit Romney comes in. 
       Romney was the guinea pig in what turned out to be a grand experiment that tested how much a politician could lie before it started actually having a negative effect. He was the perfect candidate and the perfect torch-bearer, or lie-bearer. President Clinton did, after all, point out at the Democratic Convention that only ' Romney has the brass balls to tell you something knowingly and repeatedly that isn't true.'

" Come on in! The waters not bad at all."

      Romney had been wading knee-deep in the River Of Lies for years, so he was already accustomed to being wet, and found the temperature of the water very comfortable. Even he was surprised at how easy it was to move around in water almost chest high. That was around the time that he decided he would only release two years of his tax returns because that's all he wanted to release. He didn't care if that was actually not sufficient. What was going to happen to him for not releasing more? Was he going to have to get out of the water? Nothing happened, he was right. 

    There were some politicians who watched him from the riverbank, some who only stuck their toes or maybe a foot into the river, and some who followed his signal into the water, but no one went as deep as Mit.
     The deeper he got, the more buoyant he became, and he floated with ease. But then with only time for one more lie, he chose the wrong lie to tell and the wrong people in the wrong city to tell it to. And the water was suddenly over his head. 

JEEP CHEROKEE or  THE ROMNEY HEARSE

Romney declared from a stage in front of thousands of assembly line workers that Jeep production was being moved to China, only hours after Chrysler announced the hiring of 1100 workers to help boost production of Jeep in Detroit. Chrysler immediately called a press conference to report Romney claim was fabricated.              


One of the best things about Mit Romney's love affair with lying was how it made President Obama seem even more honest than he already is. Only with Romney's unique kind of help could Barack Obama become something more than honest. Now he is Obamest.