My awesome speech impediment
I Make This Look Good
Chhun Sun |
I STUTTER.
Sometimes my words get stuck between my tongue and lips and nothing comes out. They hang there, one consonant at a time, like a deejay scratching a record right in the middle of a lyric.
At these moments, I see the world moving in slow motion. Eyes watch with kind patience or grow intense with an undertone of pity. It never seems to amaze me how stupid I feel each time and usually, the looks are unintentional.
 The embarrassment continues.
I chatter my mouth like I’m freezing in the cold, while I’m slapping my wrist like I’m naughty boy so I can get words out.
I’m one of more than three million Americans (or about 1 percent of the United States population) who suffer from stuttering, which is a speech disorder in which the normal flow of speech is frequently disrupted by repetitions of sounds, syllables, words or phrases. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, think Stuttering John, who got famous from having Howard Stern make fun of him on all the shock jock radio show.
For the most part, at least for me, I feel like it’s psychological, something that I was born with but escalated to a severity from the teasing I received courtesy of childhood classmates and relatives who found pleasure in the way I couldn’t finish a sentence.
All my life I’ve been teased. Even today, so much so that I’ve become accustomed to it and have created an invisible cushion in my head to not be hurt from it.
But I’m angered, because pop culture today has taken what I was born with and made it profitable. Following me?
Let me explain.
Look at hip-hop. Turn on the radio or watch the music videos and many of the rappers stammer or stutter or repeat without cease, all in an effort to sell records and make people dance in the nightclubs.
Listen to a 50 Cent record. Every one of his songs has him saying, like a ghetto parrot, “G-G-G-G-Unit!”
Can you believe that? That punk has made what I can do, which stutter without even trying, and turned into a popular catch phrase.
Even Memphis-based rap group Three-6 Mafia has gotten into the act.
Late last year, the group got some major radio-play with “Stay Fly,” where the members say, “I gotta stay fly-ai-ai-ai-ai” for about four minutes.
Can you believe that? I do the same thing all the time.
When I see someone, I say, “Hi-ai-ai-ai-ai.”
Even deejays are getting paid in the same way. When they scratch, they make hooks, choruses and lyrics stutter. If you’ve ever been to a club, you know exactly what I mean.
And it’s not just in hip-hop.
Just ask Reggie Bush, prospective No.1 draft pick in this year’s NFL, or any other running back who can juke an airplane with a stutter-step or two. They will all make millions.
I can’t look at this negatively, though. It’s cool to be a stutterer.
It might be an opportunity just waiting for me. Someday I might be talking to a friend and a record-label agent will approach me and will offer me a record contract.
Now that’s fly-ai-ai-ai-ai.
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