James A. McClure

I went to my annual stuttering convention last month. That’s right, a stuttering… convention:  the annual conference of the National Stuttering Association in Fort Worth, Texas. Stuttering was a problem when I was younger but is not a significant issue in my personal life today, thanks in part to conferences like these.

Stuttering is mostly neurological in origin and often genetic. (Short answer: Our brains process speech less efficiently.) Folks used to think it was psychological because it comes with a lot of emotional baggage: fear of speaking, guilt and shame. Stuttering still is widely misunderstood, and at times seems to be the only disability it’s still okay to ridicule.

People have been trying to fix stuttering for years but there’s no cure. Traditional speech therapy addresses only the behavioral part of stuttering by changing the way you speak. That doesn’t work for most people: Imagine never uttering a spontaneous syllable. As a result many people who stutter have given up on speech therapy, and there’s a booming business in alternative treatments such as assistive devices that don’t work particularly well either.

What does work for most people is therapy that changes your attitudes toward stuttering in addition to helping you speak more smoothly. Some speech-language pathologists specialize in this kind of therapy but – because stuttering affects only one percent of the population –experts are hard to find. I was lucky enough to stumble across this kind of therapy years ago but most stutterers, especially kids in school, still get the old-fashioned, mostly ineffective kind.

Changing your attitude toward stuttering amounts to a cognitive makeover:  walking away from familiar beliefs, letting go of lifelong fear and shame, bringing your stuttering out in the open and accepting that it’s okay to stutter. That’s counterintuitive and downright scary when you’ve spent your life trying your damndest not to stutter.

That’s where the stuttering convention comes in. If you’ve grown up in silent shame and never talked with another stutterer about stuttering, imagine being in a place where stuttering is normal. With more than 800 people, the Fort Worth conference was like spending three days on Planet Stuttering. Some of us stutter a little, some stutter a lot and everyone speaks freely. There are workshops and social activities, but mostly we talk. And talk.

The conference changes the rules about stuttering and opens unimagined possibilities. There are people who are good communicators in spite of their stuttering, people who are succeeding in every career you can imagine, people who have the incredible courage to get up and speak in front of a group for the very first time. And amazing children who have reached levels of self-acceptance I did not attain until middle age.

A lightbulb moment at my first stuttering conference was hearing a presenter who stuttered. I had always assumed that fluent speech was a prerequisite for public speaking and was dumbfounded when this guy stuttered through his presentation, got his point across and drew applause. Finally it occurred to me:  I can do that. And I have.

For people struggling to come to terms with stuttering, three days of immersion in stuttering acceptance is a paradigm-shifting catalyst for change. The experience also forges a deep bond among attendees and many come back year after year.

I attend every conference, not just because I’m on the National Stuttering Association’s board but because I enjoy reconnecting with friends and charging my batteries. The parties are pretty good, too.

I’ve met some nice women on the Internet. Really. And I’ve had a few laughs as well.

When my wife of 40 years passed away I had few opportunities to meet people in a new city. So when I was ready to start a new chapter of my life I turned to the Internet. It’s been a strange, new experience:  dating again after decades of marriage, in a 60-something age bracket, and on the Internet.

On most dating sites you post a profile with your photos and information, browse the profiles of others and send a message to anyone who strikes your fancy. If you hit it off online the next step is a coffee date. I now know the location of every Starbuck’s in Albuquerque.

The web site also attempts to match you with likely prospects. Every few days I get a perky message such as: “ABQmomma is a perfect match… she likes cats, too.” Well, yes, but her profile says she also owns a Harley, has a passion for country music and likes men with tattoos. A few of these matches have been pretty close but most confirm the inherent limitations of computers.

I have learned to be more discriminating than the computer. I look closely for common interests and tend to bypass profiles that have more photos of dogs, horses and grandchildren than of the person. Not to mention motorcycles. Women need to be even more discriminating because the dating sites do not verify that members actually are single, and there are some creeps out there.

I get occasional messages from women on the dating site and that’s flattering, but many are out of my age range or in other states. A few are half my age, and I reply politely that I don’t date women younger than my kids and am not looking for a trophy wife.

I get a kick out of one dating site’s improbable ads targeted to my age, gender and location, such as: “Chinese women in New Mexico looking for mature men.” If there are that many Chinese women in New Mexico, why is it so hard to find a good Chinese restaurant? Another ad has provocative photos of nubile Russian women who, the ad claims, are eager to hook up with American geezers. Apparently socialized medicine in the former Soviet Union covers breast implants. You learn something every day.

In my college days, women went for good-looking athletes with sports cars and not nerdy scholarship students. The rules change as we age and women outnumber men. At my age it’s an advantage to be sober and solvent with all my hair and most of my marbles. An 80-year-old friend was a chick magnet in his age bracket because he could still drive at night. And everyone has baggage. I see the battle scars in the profiles of women who specify: “No cheaters! No alcoholics!”

Still, there are some nice people out there. I had a pleasant relationship with a woman whose daughters posted her profile on a dating site: Her first message to me actually came from her daughter. I have met several delightful women who actually were computer matches, which proves that even computers get it right once in a while.

When I retired to New Mexico I resolved to do more outdoorsy stuff and I’m finally getting around to it.

This is a novelty for me because I grew up in a Chicago neighborhood where we learned not to play in the traffic. My only childhood exposure to nature, other than barefoot summers with my grandparents in Mississippi, was the camping, hiking and canoeing I enjoyed as a Boy Scout.

When I raised my own family in the Chicago suburbs camping was a fun, cheap vacation that got the kids good and tired. However, most Midwestern campgrounds have the population density of Chicago and are nothing at all like Walden Pond. We were more likely to be awakened by a fellow camper’s country music than by soft birdcalls. So I was ready for a place where you can drive through miles of open country and see nothing but the occasional art gallery or Indian casino.

As I write this I am happily footsore after a 6-mile hike with a group I joined a few months ago. My hiking boots are nearly broken in and I am enjoying it, although part of me still asks “Are we there yet?” after the first couple of miles.

Last month I took a white-water kayaking class on the Rio Grande near Taos (where it’s a wild mountain river long before it dampens the backs of immigrants on the Texas border). I quickly learned that (a) there’s a reason why kayaking is an Olympic sport and (b) I may be too old for this. You have to sit in a scrunched-up position with knees against the sides while leaning forward to paddle, which can be painful for those of us whose joints are getting a little creaky. Perhaps I could master kayaking eventually but would make some chiropractor wealthy in the process.

White-water rafting is more my speed. A few days ago a lady friend and I took a half-day raft trip, paddling in reasonable comfort and getting splashed a lot while bouncing through the rapids. We even enjoyed the unplanned swim when an inexperienced guide capsized our raft. I will do this again and also hope to do some canoeing on a quieter stretch of river.

I have not yet tried camping in New Mexico. It’s quiet and pristine but there are bears out there.

I spent the weekend in New York City at a board meeting, one of several trips I take each year for meetings and conferences. The meeting was productive, and I enjoyed re-visiting New York with a few spare hours to dine in Little Italy and meet an old friend for dessert. But getting there was stressful. My flight left Albuquerque an hour late while the air crew waited for a mechanic to check a leak in the lavatory and complete the required paperwork. So I had to sprint down the concourse to make the final boarding call for my connecting flight in Atlanta.  Overall, I spent more time in transit than at the meeting.

I’ve developed a love/hate relationship with travel as airliners have become Kafkaesque cattle cars. My travel skills are fairly good: I pack light, arrive at the airport early, wear slip-on shoes for the security line, print my boarding pass at home and arrange ground transportation in advance. I avoid connecting flights with less than an hour’s layover and even carry a battery-operated book light in case the reading lamp over my seat is inoperative (which came in handy on this trip).

But in the last few years much of my travel has been a study in Murphy’s Law. I arrived at a conference in Atlanta a day late when my flight from Albuquerque was cancelled because of rain in Dallas. Last year I missed a meeting in Florida because my flight was delayed for six hours.  A flight to Chicago was cancelled after the aircraft left the gate because the crew had maxed out its working hours and was no longer “legal.” I stopped using one airline because its Albuquerque flights were unreliable (maybe they can’t cope with the altitude here). What’s really depressing is that my travel experience is relatively normal — or perhaps the new normal — because I have not experienced the hours-long tarmac incarceration that we hear about in the news. Not yet, at least.

This may be the last in-person weekend meeting for this particular board.  We are considering Skype videoconferencing in the future and right now that sounds like a splendid idea.

I plan to travel more in the next few years but dread flying to the places I want to visit. Wish I could drive to Europe or, better yet, get myself teleported. Beam me to Paris, Scotty.

It’s about time. I’ve been following blogs for years. That’s how I keep in touch with my kids, including my daughter, Wendy, who parlayed a blog into a writing career.

Writing, after all, is what I do. I spent my career killing trees and, more recently, contributing to the clutter of the Internet. I cannot claim to have great thoughts to share with the world but enjoy wrapping clever words around not-so-great thoughts. And I can’t resist pointing out the comedy I notice in the world around me.

So, here goes.