Imagine a third grade girl, with messy hair a runny nose and lanky limbs that her body hasn’t quite caught up to yet. That was me. I was loud, didn’t know what a stranger was and absolutely certain I was going to be a lawyer or the President when I grew up. Absolutely certain. That is, until one day I was walking out of ballet class with my underwear sticking out the bottom of my leotard, runs in my tights and hand-me-down purple glasses.
I raced into the dressing room, to change my shoes and put my coat on to find a gaggle of girls already sitting on the bench. This particular group of girls were very tight knit as they all went to school together and were in the same class. I went to a different school. Right underneath the bench and in the middle of them all were my shoes, perfectly unreachable without them moving out of the way.
“Will you hand me my shoes?” I asked. One girl laughed, “Your what?” I pointed under the bench, “The blue and white ones.” She put a hand up, “No, what did you call them?”
“My shoes.” Obviously. But they all laughed again. “What are Sue’s? You want your Sue’s?”
“No, my SHOES!” I repeated. My mom was waiting, I was hungry, I wanted to go home for dinner. They all shrieked with laughter.
“You mean your SHOES.” The same girl.
“That’s what I said, shoes!” I pointed again. Really it wasn’t difficult.
“Someone give her her SUE’S!” Someone said. “Sue’s, Sue’s, she said Sue’s for shoes!” No, I didn’t. Why were they saying that? By now the whole dressing room was giggling. I pushed my way through to grab what I needed and left. That was when I started hating ballet, because for the rest of the year they wouldn’t let me forget that I didn’t know how to pronounce the word for those things you put on your feet, and I was very careful to never attempt to call them by their proper name in the dressing room again.
I wish I could say that was a one time event, but it wasn’t just S and SH I had trouble with. My name was spelled with an R and every time I had to introduce my self I would reveal to them that I had a speech impediment. I just couldn’t hear the difference between W and R, and S and SH. It was even more embarrassing when I would ask my teacher where I should SHIT instead of SIT.
A lot of good meaning people told my parents I would grow out of it. It was an age thing, but I had an older sister with the same problem and at 4 years my senior she still hadn’t “grown out of it”. That’s when I lost recess.
At school we had two recesses. One in the morning, one in the afternoon. For the three years I spent my afternoon recess in speech therapy, and I hated every minute of it. My friends would ask me if I wanted to play tag or go to the swings or - in the fifth grade - go make wedding plans for my best friend and her latest crush, but I was busy and far to embarrassed about where I was really going that I would often makes things up. “I have to finish my math homework” or “Mrs. Allen is going to help me with my science fair project” and once in a while, when I ran out of excuses that sounded plausible, I would skip Speech Therapy, leaving Miss K alone in the music room with her word cards and model tongue waiting for me for the whole twenty minutes of recess.
Sometimes other kids would be milling around the door to the music room, trying to avoid the freezing winds we so often got in Colorado, and I would try to blend into them as I slowly made my way through the group to the door. In hindsight I now realize there was no chance they didn’t notice me. On the rare occasion that one of these other kids, never my friends, asked me what I was doing I would tell them I had forgotten something and had permission and no they couldn’t come in with me or we would all be in trouble - only to not reemerge from the door as the bell was ringing. It was my biggest, most embarrassing, potentially damning secret - and everyone knew.
I couldn’t hear it, but to everyone else I was Kathwyn New and I lived in Colowado, my favowite colow was gween, I liked wunning and can you please hand me my sue - the white one with blue on the shide.
I had one friend whose mother would give me a dime every time I pronounced R correctly. Bless her heart she had no idea that every dime she gave me or word she asked me to repeat was a public shaming that made my eyes burn with tears I didn’t want to cry because for the love of all that is holy WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WAY I TALK!
I really, truly couldn’t hear the difference. So I went to speech therapy, and Miss K was a nice lady. She would wear these glasses and she had a beaded cord attached to them that let her wear he glasses like a necklace (this was the first time I had seen such a contraption). She would bring in this matching card game so I would match words like Ralph, River, Race, Rain, Desert, Dessert, Car, Career, Ryan, Rummage, Rear, Shear, and on and on and on. I had sentences she would make me say. Ryan raised the ladder to the roof on the rear of the red ranch house. Ralph raked remaining radishes toward our garden. She would send me home with a paper of 8 or so sentences for me to practice at home. Ask me how often I practiced.
Miss K also had this model tongue and mouth you could manipulate like a puppet. She used it to show me that the R sound can be made by putting the tip of your tongue towards the back of your mouth, or by raising the the rear of your tongue to the roof of your mouth. The first time I tried it I about gagged myself and wondered how anyone said R words without inducing vomiting.
I hated therapy, and I made no attempt to hide how I felt, and honestly it’s a testament to the amazing person Miss K is that she put up with me being a grumpy little twat for twenty minutes every school day for nearly three years. It did get better, once I was able to recognize the sound difference between ER and AR and OR and IR and EW and AW - it was like the whole world changed. I’m pretty sure 90% of my progress happened within the last year of therapy. Suddenly I would be reading my books and home and would quietly read all the R words out loud so I could practice the correct pronunciation.
It changed the way I talked. I no longer had to avoid R words, or S and SH words for that matter. The unfortunate but was that I still hated that I had had to go to Speech Therapy, and after I was released from my last session I avoided Miss K as best I could. I wanted nothing to do with the nice lady that had been the most patient, most kind teacher I could possibly have hoped for and I was a stuck up brat that openly translated my embarrassment into dislike for person that taught me how to fix it. How typically immature.
It was almost 12 years later that I finally thanked her. I was home from college and I saw her and something clicked. I had competed in Public Speaking at a National level while in high school, I had interviewed my way into the United States Air Force Academy and earned an A in the Speech class there - and before this women I would avoid words, minimize my sentences and avoid speaking in too large of groups. I felt like I owed her credit for so much more than just teaching me how to position my tongue to pronounce AR versus OR.
“I never said thank you, and I should have. So thank you.” That was all I managed to say, incomplete and inadequate as it was. She deserved more, but how do you thank a person for indirectly setting you on the path to amazing opportunities without the aforementioned cloud of shame and embarrassment? Let me know when you figure it out.
I took the liberty of modifying her name in this journal here, mostly because I haven’t asked her permission to write about her, but if she ever does read this I hope she knows just how much I appreciate what she did for that incorrigible grump of a thankless child.
