Friday, May 19, 2006

Outing A Stutterer?

Of course, I'd never do it, but I went to a musical concert of a semi-famous hammered dulcimer player whom I have admired for 5 years (he's only famous in HD circles)...and between songs, he had a very obvious stutter, but it was ONLY obvious to me. He used virtually every trick I use...word swapping...feigned introspection...pretending to get tongue tied...and it was so obvious to me, I was embarrassed for him, even though there was no reason to be. I guess it just brought out my own self-loathing for stuttering.

Anyway, I was very tempted to approach him after and ask him if he was a stutterer...but I had no idea how he felt about it or if he might even become defensive....or flat out deny it. I did not approach him, however, and it was mainly due to the fear that I'd stutter in front of him and then we'd both feel terribly awkward.

Anyway, do you think there is anything ethically wrong with me posting this here and then giving a link to his main website? I have no idea.

3 comments:

John MacIntyre said...

While I don't think there are any ethical problems with it, I do think it has a very high possibility to make him uncomfortable if he were to find out about it. So I wouldn't personally.

About 7-8 years ago, I met somebody who told me they used to stutter as a kid, but it just went away. I could see it didn't though, and I made the comment to that effect. Anyway, as you can imagine, it was not appreciated and it was vehemently denied. I think he really thought it went away when all he was doing was word switching and blasting through blocks with hard onsets.

Bottom line is that I now realize it was rude of me to do that, and hopefully won’t do it again. The only thing I seem to have done right with that was to say it when there wasn't anybody around.

Regards,
John

PS-Good to see you back.

Unknown said...

Thanks for the comments, guys...John, in hindsight, I can see how what you said was rude...but I might have slipped up as well. Sometimes things fly out of our mouths (well, not *fly* out...more like stumble out :) before we know it. Doc, I had no idea Tiger used to stutter.

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