Ignorant Words

As a young child I had a terrible speech impediment. I went to a speech therapist three times a week. I was so self-conscious when the lady would stick her head in my elementary classroom and pull me from the normal lessons to go work on my ability to talk. ‘How could I not speak.’ I would often wonder. ‘Babies learn how to talk without a therapist having them do odd mouth exercises in front of a mirror.’ I loved words and reading, the vocabulary inside my head was large, but getting it to exist in an audible form was nearly impossible.

One day at recess while waiting for a turn on the ‘big slide’ several girls I had thought where my friends came up behind me, “Hey Miah, say ’Scissors’.” One asked, I was confused until they all started demanding I say more words that I had trouble with. They began to laugh and poke fun at me loudly. I mustered up what third grade courage I could fine and yelled, “you’re just ignorant.” And I ran off to hide behind the large tree on the playground. Laying in the grass alone it felt like it took an eternity for the bell to ring. Walking up the long sidewalk into class I began to feel very itchy from the grass. When I got into class the itch was unbearable. I went to my teacher and asked if I could go to the bathroom to wash my arms and legs and what followed still breaks my heart as an adult. “No, you can’t go to the bathroom.” She said flatly. I stood there scratching and again asked, “please may I go, I’m so itchy and uncomfortable.” This woman, this teacher who was in charge of my daily life looked up and me and said, “I guess you just have the ignorant disease, that doesn’t wash off young lady.” Tears filled my eyes when she twisted the knife, she had just plunged into me with her words. “You shouldn’t be mean to the other girls. I’m so ashamed of you.” Slowly I returned to my seat. I spent the rest of the day in silence. Whenever I happened to make eye contact with the girls they smiled in a nasty way. The teacher shook her head in disapproval when she passed my desk. I felt all alone and isolated. Sadly, that would not be the end of the torture from this classroom.

When I was in school, we got a little newspaper style catalog from scholastic. It had books that the kids could order through the school. For people who lived far from bookstores this was often the only way we got new books. It was the highlight of my week to look at all the interesting books.

So, to my surprise when the teacher passed out the catalog paper that week she stopped at my desk and snorted as she opened it to the middle where the educational book section was. Then very publicly made a scene to embarrassed me. “Look Miah, they have a sign language dictionary for sale. It would be smart to learn this since no one can understand you.” She then passed out the papers to the rest of the classroom like what she had done was normal. I tried to ignore all the glaring eyes that were looking at me. I felt as if each glance burned holes through me. The teacher was very surprised when I turned in the catalog with the dictionary ordered. I may have felt like an outsider, but this teachers’ meanness had inadvertently sparked my interest. I studied that little book until it fell apart. It opened me up to a love of learning other languages. Sign language is the first and dearest to me. I worked hard in speech therapy and now no one could guess I had ever struggled to speak. Those lessons also taught me how to mimic sounds which lends itself to my ability for other languages. May this be a testament that others do not get to define you. When they throw stumbling blocks in front of you, stack them up and make stairs out them, and climb them to your success.