Porky Pig Moments

I have Porky Pig moments.  Yes, I admit it.  Sometimes the word I am trying to say just does not want to come out.  Usually it’s a speaking thing but I do have them when I write.  Most of the time no one knows because I substitute another word but, in the posting “Today’s Thoughts (8/20/09)”, I actually left it in and said sometime I might write about this.

I’m not sure why it happens.  I know that I had a lisp when I was a little girl.  I also had curly blonde hair and blue eyes. Yeah, I know, just like Cindy Brady. If I had known I had a lisp, it would have been nice to know I wasn’t the only one.  But I didn’t know this until I was about 22.  No one ever told me and I never noticed it myself.

Why did I not know?  My dad had this theory about things like that.  He thought that if you make a big deal about a childhood problem like lisps, cross-eyes, ADHD, etc., then it becomes a huge life changing experience that will affect the child the rest of their life.  Whereas if you treat the child like everything is normal and just treat the condition, then it won’t become this major huge obstacle in their life.

So, when I was 22, I was talking to my dad and mentioned something about a kid with a cute lisp.

“Yeah, like you had”, he said.

“What?”

“You know, the way you talked with a lisp when you were little”, he replied.

“Dad, what in the world are you talking about?  I never had a lisp!”.  I was quite indignant at this point.

He said “Why do you think you went to speech class in second grade?”

“Because I was privileged…like you said”.  I replied.

He just laughed and said, “Well, that theory worked”.

You see, when I was in second grade, he told me one night at dinner that the next day, I was going to leave my class and go across the street to the church (went to a Lutheran school) for a special speech class.  I asked him why and he said because I was privileged.  But, whatever you do, don’t brag about it.  Only special kids get to do this and you don’t want everyone else to feel bad.  I promised not to brag about my special  speech class and was quite proud that I was more privileged than the other kids.

The next day, sure enough, me and a couple of other kids were pulled from our class and taken across the street to the church where we practiced saying different things for about an hour and then we went back to our regular classroom.  This went on for the rest of the second grade, for a few times each week.  I never knew why we were saying these things but I worked hard at doing what the teacher asked me to do.  I figured I must have done a good job because, when I got to third grade, I didn’t get to go to the special class anymore.  Granted I wasn’t privileged anymore but I was pleased that I had done well.

I never knew why I was in a speech class and I certainly never knew that it was because I had a speech impediment.  My dad wanted me to just get over it without it being a big deal.  And it worked.  I never knew until I was 22 and he told me.  Sometimes my dad had the most brilliant parenting techniques and he should have received a prize for that one.

But getting back to the Porky Pig moments.  It’s probably a leftover from the lisp but there are words I just can’t say.  I could give a list but that just makes people want to try to make me say them and that is just torture.   I have learned that if, instead of getting embarrassed when I can’t pronounce something, if I just substitute a different word and then apologize for my Porky Pig moment, it gets a good laugh and I don’t turn beet red with embarrassment.

The other night, I was talking to my brother and telling him a story that had been on CBS Sunday Morning about a stray dog that had been found. I said that when the woman had found the dog it was emaciated.  Except I couldn’t say the word.  I said “ema….emac….eman….ema….THIN!”.  Ted started chuckling and I said, “I’m sorry…I just had a Porky Pig moment.” That made him laugh even harder.  I thought he was going to hurt himself he was laughing so hard which made me laugh just as hard.   It was quite a while before I was able to finish my story because, after we finished laughing, we had to discuss how much we missed Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and all those cartoons.  So a potentially awkward moment turned into a journey back to when we watched those cartoons and it deflected how my tongue just won’t fit around certain combinations of letters.

And….to borrow from the great Porky Pig…..That’s all folks!!