Did you ever have some nervous tic or something that made you very insecure when you were growing up? For me, it was stuttering. My parents did not think it was anything serious. As a matter of fact, they didn’t even know I had the problem. My thing was, that I would stutter when I had to speak in front of a crowd. If I needed to say something in front of my parents, it wouldn’t be that bad.
Stuttering was never an issue in social situations like with my friends. They didn’t even know I stuttered. If I needed to talk to someone I didn’t know, then it would appear. A had a couple of friends with the same problem. For one of them, life was especially tough because his case was the most severe. He would have a stammer even when we were playing.
No one in our group of friends made any fun of him, or any one of us for that matter. But some kids at school were not that forgiving. The teachers at our school were very good. They would make us feel very comfortable and not focus that much on it. Nevertheless, speaking in front of my fellow classmates to talk about a school project or anything else, was something I avoided.
To the average person, stuttering might not seem like a big deal, but the fact of the matter is, it hinders many of the talents and capabilities you might have. It makes other insecurities flare up and eats away at your self- confidence. In my case, the stuttering went away as soon as I started high school, for my other classmates who had it, it wouldn’t be that simple.
They were actually referred to speech therapy. The therapy did help them a lot, but as soon as they stopped going, it would flare up again. They asked me how I had done it and I told them that I would just read aloud a lot. I figured that if I said the words frequently enough, my speech would become more fluid, and I guess it did.
The following story is about a young man that has had a stammer for as long as he can remember. He is ready to give up on school at one moment because the entire ordeal has been very demotivating for him. That is until he gets a new teacher that gets an inspiring idea from a speech he heard. He figures they don’t have anything to lose, so he gives it a try. Several days later, he gets the boy to speak in front of several kids at an auditorium. What happens next is almost too good to be true!
