Tongue-Tied
Sometimes I wish my mouth had a backspace button.
For as long as I can remember, I've stumbled over my words when I am the least bit flustered. It's as if there's a short circuit in my brain, and the wrong word just pops out. Today I asked for a computer card instead of a computer cord. I say "you're welcome" before anyone thanks me. Even with close friends, I sometimes have to start a sentence 3 times before I can finish it.
When I do manage to get a coherent sentence out, I'm often kicking myself five minutes later for its substance. Recently I was talking to a mom in my building who had just returned to work after maternity leave; she was gutted about the decision. I babbled on about how awesome it was to be able to actually eat lunch when I went back to work, since preparing meals was a real struggle for me when I was home. But seriously, I liked going back to work for the lunch? That's what I said to recommend working motherhood? That doesn't even make my top 10 list of reasons why I work. I almost knocked on her door for a do-over.
That's why writing is so therapeutic for me. It helps me organize my thoughts. I'm often not really sure how I feel until I wrestle my thoughts down on paper and cut them down to comprehensible dimensions. If only I could hit the pause button on life, take a few minutes to sketch out my thoughts, and press play again, finally saying something eloquent, appropriate and maybe even funny.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently, because the conversations I'll need to have with Muffin as she grows up are looming before me, and I feel unequal to the task. At the moment, she only understands simple sentences so I've been able to tackle the big topics: "Yes, that's your vagina and your bum" and "Hitting hurts! No hitting." But as she gets older, the issues before us will only get more complicated and the message will be need to be more subtle. What will I say when someone at school teases her about her strawberry? How will I explain why she never got to meet her Grandpa Ken? How will I tackle why it's important for me to work, even if that means spending time away from her?
Well, at least I won't tell her it's for the lunch.
For as long as I can remember, I've stumbled over my words when I am the least bit flustered. It's as if there's a short circuit in my brain, and the wrong word just pops out. Today I asked for a computer card instead of a computer cord. I say "you're welcome" before anyone thanks me. Even with close friends, I sometimes have to start a sentence 3 times before I can finish it.
When I do manage to get a coherent sentence out, I'm often kicking myself five minutes later for its substance. Recently I was talking to a mom in my building who had just returned to work after maternity leave; she was gutted about the decision. I babbled on about how awesome it was to be able to actually eat lunch when I went back to work, since preparing meals was a real struggle for me when I was home. But seriously, I liked going back to work for the lunch? That's what I said to recommend working motherhood? That doesn't even make my top 10 list of reasons why I work. I almost knocked on her door for a do-over.
That's why writing is so therapeutic for me. It helps me organize my thoughts. I'm often not really sure how I feel until I wrestle my thoughts down on paper and cut them down to comprehensible dimensions. If only I could hit the pause button on life, take a few minutes to sketch out my thoughts, and press play again, finally saying something eloquent, appropriate and maybe even funny.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently, because the conversations I'll need to have with Muffin as she grows up are looming before me, and I feel unequal to the task. At the moment, she only understands simple sentences so I've been able to tackle the big topics: "Yes, that's your vagina and your bum" and "Hitting hurts! No hitting." But as she gets older, the issues before us will only get more complicated and the message will be need to be more subtle. What will I say when someone at school teases her about her strawberry? How will I explain why she never got to meet her Grandpa Ken? How will I tackle why it's important for me to work, even if that means spending time away from her?
Well, at least I won't tell her it's for the lunch.
posted by Muffin's Mom at 9:51 PM
1 Comments:
A similar thing happens to me also. Its very frustrating and makes me feel really stupid sometimes. Part of it attribute to my ADD. But the "can I re-do that social interaction?" is something I've experienced. All we can hope is that folks we know take us for the whole of what we utter over time, not the little bits and pieces that escape disfluently. Ick - after you get bast 40, then its the ol' word-finding dilemma that enters into simple speech. Talk about frustrating! Then one uses a lot of "thingie," "whats-her-name" and other such catch-all words.
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