Feeling: punctured
Listening to: Jump Little Children - Vertigo
Reading/Watching: Mansfield Park (I think the book is influencing me, too... Fanny Price is way too shy and sensitive)

Something strange happened today. Not strange in the supernatural sense, strange in the wow-Katie-is-really-weird sense.

I was teaching a middle school choir class, and obviously the kids are not too thrilled with me, because the teacher left a busy-work assignment (writing down solfege for seven pages of music... looked stultifying to me, too), and in my cruel, evilevil way, I am making them do it. I'm helping them, I'm cracking jokes, I'm trying to gently keep them on task without yelling, but still, I am making them work when they have a substitute teacher, an occurrence which usually equates to a movie day.

Yup. I'm the devil incarnate.

But then in my fifth-period class, one of the eighth grade girls who was particularly displeased with me began mocking the way I spoke when my back was turned. I knew she was doing something by the way the kids around her giggled and snickered every time I went to help another student, and I shrugged it off. Then she asked loudly, "Miss, what's the name for what's wrong with you?"

I turned, surprised. "Excuse me?"

"No, I mean, for the way you say your 's' wrong. Is it called a lisp?"

Calmly, I replied, "Yes. That's what it's called." And I went to sit down at the teacher's desk.

She continued on it, asking, "Oh, am I being mean? Does it bother you to talk about it?"

"Well considering it's something I've dealt with all my life, it doesn't really bother me anymore." But what I wanted to say was: I don't know, does it bother you when people talk about you being a rude little bitch? Of course, I didn't say that. I ignored her, sat down, kept a steely eye on the class, and continued as I was. But meanwhile, my mind was incapable of letting go of the subject.

I don't remember having a lisp when I was really little, but I did have a huge gap between my front teeth until I was thirteen. Then I got into highschool and had braces put in, and developed a very strong impediment to the way I said my "S".

My choir director was the first one to mention it, saying she would let me have the solo I was trying out for, if I could figure out how to avoid singing "She'th like the thwallow." I promised I would, I worked on it for the next week, but wasn't able to fix it. Now my infamous "Thwallow Tholo" is part of the family video archive, and my parents still occasionally tease me about it.

I worked to conceal it, usually just by making my voice sound good enough that people didn't notice the lisp. That didn't stop the girls in choir from bringing it up, but hey, I've decided to pin that down to jealousy. I had my braces taken off my senior year, and the retainer I had to wear made my lisp ten times worse, so I stopped wearing it the first instant I could. But it was always there, because my "S" was formed in the way my tongue related to my front teeth: a relationship which had been permanently altered, thanks to braces and bridges and retainers.

In college, I timidly brought the lisp up to my voice teacher and mentor, Dr. Troxler, and she said we could work on it intensively until it was almost completely concealed in my singing. At the time, I was learning Zerlina's "Batti batti" from Don Giovanni, and the ending lines of "si si si si si si" were literally frustrating me to tears.

I found a way around it, so that I could even work it out of my speaking voice when I concentrated hard enough, and it made playing Emilia in Othello much easier, knowing I wasn't calling Mini-Me "Dethdemona." But it still surfaces when I'm tired or flustered, much like someone with a stammer. It's just been a long time since I've worried about it, and much, much longer since I've been teased about it.

Funny, though. The instant someone brought it up, I felt small and defensive and found myself examining every word I spoke, and (pathetically enough) fighting back tears. Because, you know, I'm still twelve years old sometimes.

It's a good reminder, I guess, that no matter how grown-up you feel, no matter how far in the past those dismal ugly-duckling years feel, no matter how strong and independent and well-protected you keep yourself, there will always be chinks in the armor.

And sometimes, an annoying thirteen-year-old girl (who just doesn't want to write solfege) will unwittingly find them.

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