My sister once heard me on the phone and thought I was being rude. I was relieved I hadn't blocked. That difference stayed with me.
The call I was trying to make
I was in high school. I had met a girl through a friend, and she’d given me her phone number on a piece of paper. One afternoon I called it.
A deep voice answered. I thought it must be her dad, and I was scared. I wanted to make a polite request to speak with her. What came out was her name, with repetitions, and please.
She wasn’t available, and I declined to leave a message. I wanted to, but I didn’t feel I could get through it without embarrassing myself. Sometimes you just get plain tired of feeling embarrassed.
My sister overheard that and thought I was rude. What she heard and what I was going through were very different. I had wanted to say the whole request, and I was just glad I hadn't blocked.
Why that example matters to me
It was an ordinary phone call to somebody I wanted to talk to. In my head, it had become a frightening speaking moment before I could get the request out.
When I talk about how much could be going on around a few words, that is one of the experiences I mean. I knew what I wanted to say. The words the other person heard didn't carry the whole story.
What an old friend told me years later
I had a friend from a summer camp who lived out of town. We stayed in touch, and I asked her to my junior-year prom. We were always just friends.
Years later, I got back in touch with her in New York. By then, my fluency had improved so much that I felt like a different person. We hung out, and the subject of my stutter came up.
She told me she and her friends hadn’t known I stuttered. They had thought I was a little mentally slow.