I lisped as a child. One of my most vivid memories of elementary school—aside from falling off the monkey bars and landing face first in the dirt—is of standing in line in class while some other kids asked me to recite the classic “she sells seashells” tongue-twister. I complied, and they giggled.  They asked me to do it again.  I did, and they giggled some more.  Since to my ear, the phrase sounded perfectly fine, I thought that I just had naturally hilarious delivery. I could even make seashells funny. I was a comic genius.

A few weeks later I was yanked out of class to attend my first speech therapy session. There was only one other student in class—a girl named Tammy who had problems with her Rs.  I hated Tammy and her Rs.  We fought every week over whose letter was harder to pronounce. Once, we almost came to blows.

Me: “Etheth are harder.”
Tammy: “No. Awes awe hawdew. Esses awe easy.” 
Me:  “Arth are eathy.  Thtupid.” 
Tammy: “Weetawd.”  

I wasn’t sure why I was stuck in speech class until the therapist recorded my voice and played it back for me.  I could hardly believe my ears. “Thee thellth theethellth by the thee thore.”  I cried all the way home from school.

To this day I cringe when I hear my voice on tape, even though I conquered the lisp long ago (it sneaks back on occasion when I’m tired or taking large doses of cold medicine). Recording my outgoing voice mail message requires at least 10 takes until I’m satisfied. I don’t mind public speaking, doing interviews, or otherwise being recorded—I just don’t like listening to the end product. 

So it was with some hesitancy that I tuned in to my interview on “Fiction Nation” on XM Satellite Radio last weekend. The lovely and talented Kim Alexander devoted nearly a half hour to me and my book, “Monkey Love.”   Kim had already given my book glowing reviews, both on-air and online, so I was curious to hear the interview. Listening to the broadcast, I cringed from time to time at the sound of my voice. Was that sneaky S sliding into a lisp, or was it just a bad phone connection?  Kim has an exquisite radio voice—crisp, clear, and melodious—while I sounded like I was talking through a tin can.  My husband says I have a habit of holding the receiver too close to my mouth. 

Whatever the reason, the sound of my voice transported me back to elementary school.  To the last day of speech class, when the sadistic therapist forced Tammy and I to play a board game for the speech impaired (Lisp-opoly?), in which you can only move your game piece forward by correctly pronouncing one of your “trouble words.”  Tammy won with something ridiculously easy like “purple.” Purple!  While I’d stumbled over Mississippi and sassafras. Oh, the injustice!

I was yanked back to the present by my husband, giggling on the sofa beside me. At something I said, not the s-s-sound of my voice.  For the record, Rs are MUCH easier to say than Ss (and on a particularly strong dose of cold medicine, I struggle with both), but bring on the tape recorders and the interviews.  I’ve learned it’s my words, not my letters, that can provoke laughter. Maybe it always has been. Maybe seashells are inherently funny. 

Take that, Tammy.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 26th, 2007 at 2:58 am and is filed under Childhood, Interviews, Speech Impediments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.