Life With a Lisp

Living with an impediment only makes me more aware of people and their prejudice. And It's living with a impediment that allows more prejudice to live in me.

Every time I hear an 'S' I think twice about how that would sound coming out of me, or how I would have to change a sentence to make myself sound "normal" to others. Maybe I think to much about how I sound in others opinions, or maybe I'm just sick and tired of it. See, when a person has a lisp, it sounds normal to the person speaking it, but when another person hears this it sounds different. Because of this I was unaware of this lisp until 4th grade. And the only other people who saw me differently were adults. Children never informed me of this. In a weird way i can agree and disagree with both sides. I love the fact that children see me as equal and I hate the fact they never told me. I love how adults tell me about this problem, but I hate the fact that they try to fix me and make me "normal". So in essence children are more accepting, and adults are more interactive. This is at least a basic opinion of how I saw them.
I still remember embarrassing visits from the school funded speech therapy teacher in elementary school. I remember the looks people gave me as the speech therapy teacher called my name, and I got up. They weren't looks of hate, they were looks of confusion and wonder. As I worked on my speech in this class, the therapist worked with at least 3 other students in a 30 minute time period. As one would imagine this left me little time to work on a good technique, because the therapist was busy showing others how to speak properly. I continued these classes for 2 years and three days a week (whenever school was in session). The last week of elementary school I specifically remember the teacher letting me pass speech therapy, because she believed going to speech therapy in middle school would develop bad self esteem for me. At the time I thought this was the nicest thing anyone could ever do because, I thought my generation would never judge me........
Then we grew up. And from middle school to high school I can remember being teased, not bullied. To me teasing is being bullied mentally, and to be bullied is to be teased physically. I been called Slushie Sally, Slushie, Lisp Boy, and countless other names that kinda swept over my head. But the one remark that really hurt me mentally was when a kid asked me if I was gay. After i told him "no", he told me he thought I was because of the way I talked. I was never so depressed in my life before that, but I put on a mask of a happy school boy with good grades. And every time I speak a word with that damn 'S' sound to a person I've never known, and I see them smiling, I already know what they're thinking, but again I put on the mask. At least I've made good friends who know about my impediment and don't judge me, (at least I think).
I'm well aware of the problem and I would try anything in my power and logic to get speech therapy again, but for some reason my parents keep telling me they don't hear a lisp. And every time they say this I'm just reminded of all the smiles, remarks, and thoughts people have of my voice, and how they can hear it, but not my parents. Maybe it's because I'm mom's perfect little angel and everything about me is perfect. As far as I'm aware, no one is perfect, and no human will ever be perfect. No one can ever be perfect because perfect is an opinion, and you know what, opinions are what start arguments, and arguments lead to war. Whether or not this war between me and mankind is in my head or outside my head, I would have a hard time hurting another human being unless they made a horrible, horrible remark. And even if a remark is that bad I could never hurt them someone badly.
My lisp has taught me to love and mostly hate the world for all of it's views and opinions. People view me as a pessimistic person, and that's only because I have a hard time believing anyone has true optimism.
Regardless of what I've said about my parents in this post, I could never hate them for loving me as a son though. Maybe speech therapy is just to expensive for us. Guess I should go job hunting soon.