The dreaded first impression

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Tess

Tess Casher writes about reactions to her stammer when meeting new people, and the one-liners she uses to bring it up in conversation.

While stammering can impact the entire art of conversation, it can particularly attack the dreaded moment of the first impression. Everyone is dysfluent from time to time. However, when I meet a new person and inevitably start fumbling on the first couple of syllables, I can see a certain calculation beginning behind their eyes. A mental whirring, thrumming, spinning, buzzing and processing as they puzzle out that their conversational partner is not experiencing a common blip. The interlocutor comes to realise that they are, in fact, speaking to a genuine bonafide stammerer.

I have not figured out how to effectively negotiate these first thirty seconds where I slide from 'fluent' to 'dysfluent' in the other person's mind. Of course, negotiating the first impression depends on context and different scenarios call for unique strategies. For a couple of particularly noteworthy examples:

I've been called drunk in social and professional settings when I was stone-cold sober. With only cheese, crackers and tonic water in my system, a good Samaritan, but a stranger nevertheless, kept trying to walk me home at 2am, asserting that my stammer was proof that I wasn't sober enough to make it back alone.

Despite the uncertainty that stammering throws into the first impression, it also creates the possibility for genuine connection.

A couple of times after I finished a presentation, I would know that I stammered but didn't think it was that noticeable. After class, the teacher would then apologise to me saying, "I should have mentioned that there are exceptions to the 'mandatory presentation'."

A couple of years ago, I went to the hospital (with what we later figured out were stress-induced hemiplegic migraines), presenting with numbness on my left side, feeling woozy and stammering. With smoke blowing off the gurney tires, it was my fastest-ever hospital wait time. Only when multiple doctors were surrounding me did it (very embarrassingly) materialise that I was, indeed, not having a stroke and just stammered.

Introducing my stammer

Outside of these extreme scenarios, I have developed some one-liners for how I like to 'introduce' the fact that I stammer into the conversation:

"S-s-sorry, I st-t-tammer."

• Pros: By directly addressing the situation, I no longer feel stress or pressure to start speaking fluently.
• Cons: I shouldn't apologise for stammering, and the other person may feel compelled to say something cheesy along the lines of "Don't worry about it," which can slightly derail the conversational flow.

[After a significant block] "I'm p-p-ausing for d-dramatic effect."

• Pros: Option to add joking jazz hands and it might cut the awkwardness with a laugh.
• Cons: Also, might not get a laugh and leave things feeling worse.

Speech-therapy hand motion

Sometimes I make a fluid motion with my hand to get over a block.

• Pros: The overt visual strategy communicates "I have a stammer" without having a slightly awkward mini side-conversation about it.
• Cons: Sometimes I feel a little foolish.

Genuine connection

Despite the uncertainty that stammering throws into the first impression, it also creates the possibility for genuine connection. There's vulnerability, authenticity, individuality (and a sprinkling of light-hearted comedic potential) in the stutterance (to borrow the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze's term). Stammering adds a textured, vibrating, life-filled sparkle to my voice and I wouldn't feel like I'd be introducing myself if that initial "Hi, my name is..." didn't have a bit of extra staccato. Plus, I've always found that a person who is a gem of a human being never really minds (and usually appreciates) all the interesting elements that make up a person.

So, for all their layered complexity (that sometimes makes my introverted self tremble) I will take my stammered, electric "hellos" any day of the week!

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