September Meeting Recap

by | Oct 1, 2018 | Recaps

September Meeting Recap
Last Tuesday the Dallas Chapter of the National Stuttering Association met for our September Meeting and here’s a quick recap of what happened.

We had 14 members in attendance, with one new member (welcome Megan!), and a quick appearance by Valerie Jean Bart, owner of Val’s Cheesecakes and a person who stutters, who wanted to introduce himself to our group by bringing us some delicious cheesecake cupcakes– YUM! Unfortunately he couldn’t stay, but it was a pleasure meeting him and he promised to join us next month.

With the Texas State Fair about to start in a few weeks we decided that it would be cool to introduce ourselves and share what is our favorite thing about the fair… and unsurprisingly the winner was food. “Fried everything”, is the unofficial motto of the State Fair, and our members seem to love all about it.

With that, we moved to our topic for the night: “Stuttering in the News”.

First, we watched a news report about the recent Starbucks controversy, where an employee decided it was funny to mock a person who stutter by writing “SSSSam” on his cup. We discussed how did that make us feel, and shared stories of similar instances where a cashier/server/customer service representative thought making fun of our speech was ok. Many of us have experienced similar situations, and we agreed that while it presents us with a good opportunity to educate, it would be preferable to not have to deal with that.

Next, we watched a recent episode of the ABC hidden-camera show “What Would You Do?”. The episode in question presented a server who stuttered (played by Marc Winski, a New York based member of the NSA), being disrespected at work by a couple of rude customers (both paid actors), while the cameras captured the reactions of the unsuspecting customers.

Here’s the actual video:
What would YOU do?
The video obviously resonated with everybody, as most of us have been the object of rude comments at one point or another, but most of us were pleasantly surprised by the reactions of the majority of customers, who jumped immediately to the defense of Marc. We also talked about what to do in those cases (remain calm, try to educate, ignore, etc), what we wish we could do (smacking people is a favorite), and about what there is to learn from those situations.To get deeper into the conversation, we beamed into our meeting Marc Winski himself, directly from New York, who graciously shared a few minutes with us to answer some questions via Skype. Marc talked to us about what got him into acting, his experiences– both positive and negative– being a person who stutters in the entertainment industry, and the lessons he has learned along the way.

This was the first time we had a virtual guest on one of our meetings and not counting the few connection hiccups, everybody seemed to get a lot out of it, enjoying the chance to ask a few questions to somebody that is out there being the face of stuttering in front of a national audience.

Sharing our experiences, with people in the room or even via Skype, helps us feel connected to one another, and this meeting was a perfect example of that.
If you stutter, you are not alone.
Another great meeting in the bag, see you next time!Dallas NSA