The Phone Again

So, last night I logged onto my dating service online and found someone interesting…we exchange a few emails…eventually, cell phone numbers…and long story, short, I get a call a few minutes later. Understand, I have enough tricks up my sleeve to get by in most difficult situations, though they do not always work. For example, I rarely will call somebody else, simply because I usually block right away and no tricks will get me by.

It’s much easier to have someone call me…that way I don’t have to deal with the stress of knowing the person I am talking to doesn’t even know who I am and I am burdened with establishing the familiarity. Maybe you know what I’m talking about. I think most stutterers do. My boss at work once told me to call city hall in order to get some political campaign contribution statistics. This was a terrifying prospect for me because first of all, I had no idea who would have such information…and I knew the person who would first answer the phone…probably wasn’t the person I’d need to speak to and I’d have to start off the conversation by establishing with this person exactly what I was looking for. Yikes.

I tried everything else in order to avoid the call. I logged on the internet…searched the site…looked for an email…but ultimately knew it wasn’t going to be good enough because my boss was expecting an answer pretty quickly and an email wouldn’t get information as fast as he wanted it. If I told him I emailed, he’d just say, “Okay, did you call?” Eventually, I did call. If you are a stutterer, you know how emotionally draining such a task is and how glad you are once the call is over and you are replaying the entire conversation with whomever you were talking to over and over in your head, knowing they were probably repulsed by your voice and hated talking to you. And you also know that finally getting through the conversation is not as satisfying as one might think because you know that a time is coming soon where you’ll have to do it all over again.

So, I get the call, I have the person’s name, they have mine, everything is as conducive as it can possibly be for the greatest chance of fluency. And to my delight, I am mostly fluent! Obviously I did stutter just a tad in my opening sentences because almost immediately, the person says, “Oh, you stutter.” Now…I usually pride myself on being very good at hiding it from people (maybe I’m just fooling myself)…and I have only had a handful of people in my entire life mention my stutter at all, if they noticed. To have this person mention it almost immediately either means…they know a stutterer in their own life, they are a speech therapist…they stutter themselves…or I am not as good at hiding it as I think I am. I’m sure it’s the latter. At least this time.

It totally took the edge off for some reason (usually it would make it worse) and I winded up being almost completely fluent the entire conversation, using most of my tricks (word swapping…exhaling until I have only enough air to push out the first sentence…feigning introspection, etc.). And to top it off…I have a coffee date for this evening.