One member read the Welcoming Words for the first time, joking that he’d “fall on that grenade” for the group. He ended up being noticeably more fluent and used a great pull-out strategy to ease himself out of a block at one point, which was praised by the group.
Barry talked about his ideas to have a “stuttering is awesome” boat entry in a parade competition on the lake near his house next summer with a Porky Pig theme. We thought it might be a great way to get some word out in that area about stuttering in a positive, fun way. Stay tuned!
One of the members talked about being somewhat ambushed for a Stuck in VT (ironically not named for stuttering) video segment, and some of her sound bites were used as part of a story on gardening downtown. She mentioned how she wondered how they might edit the clips in terms of any stuttering, and she noticed one postponement in the audio which might not have been noticeable to the casual listener. This was a follow-up to a previous discussion about radio shows on NPR and whether they edit out stutters or let the natural speech patterns slip through. We were all impressed with her composure in the face of a sudden live interview!
Our resident joke teller told a good one to get the laughs flowing. He intentionally picks longer jokes so they take longer to build up to the punch line for speech practice. This morphed into more laughter as we joked about two of our members becoming SLPs in the community so that there could be some kind of a “stuttering mafia” in town … a secret club of sorts that protects people who stutter using non-violent advocacy.
We were laughing so much that it took us some time to read the Closing Words, and the group felt that the welcoming/closing words were “supportive” and “not cultish.” Overall, great lively conversation and we’re looking forward to more to come!
See you at the next one on the 16th!