“I sometimes have a stammer.”
“Are you stupid or something?”
“When you breathe like that you sound a bit like Darth Vader.”
“Oh like the King’s Speech?”
As soon as that came out and everyone watched it, it’s just like, “I’m a stammering
expert!”
It’s nice that people have something to relate it to.
Because before the King’s Speech it was Gareth Gates wasn’t it?
To be fair, I quite like the scene in the King’s Speech where he just starts swearing
and doesn’t stutter because that’s real life stuff.
It does actually help!
He says something like, “Fuckity fuck fuck!”
You know what, that helps a lot though.
“Fuck.”
I said it.
Yeah, There you go!
“Does it stop when you sing?”
Yeah it does.
So people ask me, “So why don’t you just sing all the time instead of speaking?”
“Why don’t you just sing it?”
I’m like, well I’m not going to burst into song in the chip shop.
Just imagine speaking to people like this.
“People finishing your sentences.”
This is probably, one of the top three which I hate, especially when they get it wrong.
They’re not really helping my stammer.
Helping my stammer to me means, for me to say the words and then get over them.
I used to be relieved, but then you get that feeling of shame afterwards of like, “I’m
going to have to say that word again in the future.”
“What happened to you?”
Someone jokingly said, “Did your parents beat you?” and I was like…
I’ve been asked this so many times by people who don’t understand.
I think the majority of people who stutter, it’s just something you grow up with basically.
But there are some examples where people would have had a traumatic incident.
I personally don't think anything happened to me.
Unless my parents dropped me and didn’t tell me.
If so, that’s not cool.
“Are you stupid or something?”
When they assume that your dumb because of your stutter I think that’s due to a lot
of movies like Water Boy.
Because people don’t really think it's a disability, then it's okay to poke fun at.
Whether its Porky Pig or…
When fluent people stutter it’s when they’re nervous.
So people sometimes assume you’re nervous or you’re indecisive.
And it can come across in that way but you know exactly what you want to say.
“Is there nothing you can do about that?”
That should get fucking copyrighted.
I’ve been asked that a lot of times.
There are things that help, to be fair.
So, accepting you stutter, not hiding from it, letting other people know that you stutter.
If you don’t want to do anything about it then that's fine.
Okay, yeah.
No issues with that whatsoever.
But if you do, yeah there is help out there.
It’s getting people to understand that it’s a fluid thing.
There’s no cure and you’re always having to work on it.
Just put a search in and many kind of therapies will come up and give them a go.
This one for me is a bad one: “Spit it out”.
That’s the worst thing because if people pressure you with time pressure...
It makes it worse.
It makes it so much worse.
They don’t even have to say anything, sometimes you just see their attention drift.
The ones I get a lot are either…
Oh yeah the clicks.
Or the...
When people look away from you.
When you can sort of see them cringing a bit.
Yeah.
Being like, “Oh God, I don’t want to be in this situation.”
“Don’t you even know your own name?”
It's not that we don’t know our own name, it's just it gets blocked.
Registration would be passed around, and I could always remember kind of rehearsing and
pre-rehearsing, how I would like to say my name.
It is such a big part of you.
It is you.
Singled me out and asked me why I was talking...
I can’t really remember what I mustered but I did stammer on every other word.
And he imitated right back and gave tit for tat and said, “Nisar, that’s w-w-why y-y-you
sh-sh-sh-ould n-n-never talk in class”.
And he got the class in ruptures and I can remember kind of, burying my head in my non-existing
hair and stayed in that posture for maybe an hour.
“Do you feel like your stammer holds you back?”
Yeah, I think I definitely hold back from doing things like going to drama club or like
going for a captaincy in a sports team, because I didn’t want to do all the motivational
talks at half-time.
Certainly, I couldn’t do presentations.
Fifteen minute presentation - you're looking at two hours…
There’s just been sometimes where I’m like, but at the end of the day it’s what
makes me me.
The good things I like to think I do in life, have maybe been because of not wanting anyone
else to feel like shit.
I think it made me a stronger person it builds character.
So If I have a son and he has a stutter I’d be like fair play.
I see it as a positive challenge.
In fact, I’m quite proud to stutter.
It used to hold - it used to stop me from doing everything, now I do what I want.
Yes I stammer so what?
It is me so you need to deal with it!