I HAVE a friend, Sue, in London who has a stammer and a friend, Valerie, in New York who has a stutter. The words they use are different but they describe exactly similar conditions and the two women have exactly the same attitude. They don't want speech hesitancy to be considered an affliction to be lavished with sympathy but they do want it to be recognised as a condition.
As it happens, I am a bad friend to both these women because I have an overpowering urge to finish most people's sentences for them, all the time. Those who are thoughtful or measured in the way they speak have no chance of getting to the end of what they want to say I assume any slight pause is a licence for interruption.
More than that, I often consider that a good conversation should be full of interruptions and half-completed thoughts. This is what keeps people alert and awake. And even as a heavy talker myself, I am content to be interrupted in mid-flow by other eager speakers. I suppose I feel there's a kind of fairness about it, if someone has the floor a bit too long or has got repetitive or takes an age to get to the point then it's only fair, in the interests of balance, to let others in.
But if you're dealing with someone who has a stammer then this is not the right way to go. I thought it was, and that it was a part of not being patronising and patting them on the head and saying "Does she take sugar?" But I am told it calls for a slightly different kind of support, and one of the things those who stammer like is to be allowed finish the word. In fact, they will finish it if you let them, and then they will have a sense of achievement. By saying it first, you are robbing them of that sense of achievement. Do it all the time and conversation becomes pointless, they say.
The other thing they like is eye contact. Here, mercifully, I'm not bad because I do look at people - maybe too intensely and with too much interest, but I keep looking at them whatever they are saying. Even if they are struggling for a word I wouldn't avert my eyes. And this is good. Stutterers and stammerers hate seeing people look up at ceilings or bend down to examine the floor to avoid eye contact. Sue says she has looked at more hair-partings than she wants to see in many lifetimes. People are always picking things off her carpet, she says, and rising triumphantly with a piece of fluff just as soon as she has got the word out.
In New York, Valerie says, they study the air conditioning high up on the walls and she sees their adam's apples bobbing around as they wait for her to finish the word that is causing her grief.
Sue is an artist, a down-to-earth sort of person who hates the word "actually", but she uses it a lot because it sort of heads off whatever feared word may be coming up. Her sentences are full of actuallys, that she doesn't mean at all.
Valerie, meanwhile, is in the legal side of publishing, in rights and contracts - and she finds herself using a very unprecise phrase, "like you know," when she doesn't want to.
It's only by saying "like you know" that she can ease herself into tackling words that cause her problems, and being an up-front North American, she sometimes explains that to people before she begins the conversation.
The trouble is, people who can't handle it start examining the ceiling immediately and never look her in the eye from that moment on, and it's hard to make an offer for the large print editions or the Japanese translation to someone whose face is totally unknown to you but whose throat is depressingly familiar.
Is it the same here, or are these just my overly dramatic friends abroad?
Yes, it's exactly the same, say the members of the Irish Stammering Association, an organisation that has given help and encouragement to the many thousands who stammer in this country. They say stammerers can get very jaundiced when people refer to how fluent all Irish people are, and how mellifluous, having words at will. You may have thoughts at will and marvellous things to express - but if you are going to be caught short by the letters M or T or any combination at all of letters, then you can find yourself looking wryly at descriptions of all Ireland being so extraordinarily fluent.
It is immensely cheering for anyone who joins this association to learn from statistics just how many people actually do stammer in the world, how many children go through a dysfluent speaking period and grow out of it, and, particularly, how much can be done for those who have not grown out of it.
Often it's a matter of decreasing the anxiety in your life, changing your breathing habits, speaking with deep tones from the chest, of removing every vestige of speech avoidance from your life. So if you found you were buying things from a machine or a supermarket to avoid having to ask for them, or that there were certain words you considered off-limits, then you have to face these things. You have to go into a shop and ask for the item you want, or force yourself to say the word you have never yet been able to finish. It can be done; the word actually can be said and if you don't try it, you may well start to ensure other words go off limits as well.
ONCE the rest of us realise this is the cure, then we won't go around finishing words and sentences for people any more. There is an open day organised by the association on June 21st at University College, Galway. It's not only for those who stammer, it is for anyone. There will be many parents of children who have begun to have speech problems there, and they will hear how much preventative work can be done, with the help of speech therapists
There will be the girlfriends and boyfriends of those who slammer, and they can hear about the exercises and how to help by eye contact when the stammerer is on the phone to someone else. Sometimes stammering returns on the phone just because there is no one to look at, no one to force the words out by refusing to look down or up or away.
At such an open day, stammerers will increase their sense of self worth, and realise that success comes from refusing to hide away and the acknowledgment that just over 1 per cent of all people stammer, and nothing is gained by keeping a low profile.
The association is helped by having the charismatic Proinsias De Rossa, who is about as far from low profile as any stammerer could ever hope to be, as a patron.
There is an intensive course for stammerers which will be held in the Aisling Hotel, Dublin, for four days from May 29th. This is called the McGuire Programme run by David McGuire, who stammered so badly at one time that he knew he would have to help himself and others. There are some places still left and the Irish Stammering Association can put you in touch with the organisers.
The Irish Stammering Association is at Carmichael House, North Brunswick Street, Dublin 7, Phone (01) 872 4405.