My Most Embarrassing Moment

Michael, 6th grade, age 12, Tucson AZ

My most embarrassing moment was in 2nd grade when I had to do a research paper. I did mine on Sidewinder snakes and when the paper was completed, we had to read it in front of the whole class. My speech that year had been good until that day. When I got up in front of the class, and opened my mouth to say the title, my words got stuck in my mouth. I tried for at least 2 minutes to get the words of the title out. I'm not sure whether I ever got the whole title out, but the class started to giggle and laugh. The teacher gave me a nasty look and told me to sit down. Because my speech had been so good before then, the teacher thought that I was just goofing around. I didn't tell her until about a couple months later that I was not playing around, that I actually stutter. I wished I would have told her before that time so maybe she could have told the other kids that I was not playing around and try to help them understand my problem.

Today, I haven't been doing so well. For about a month, speech has been harder, but I'm hoping to get better at it soon. When I try to say something, I get out of breath and my vocal chords tighten up, so I end up repeating my sounds a lot. Speech is a lot more difficult when I'm nervous or excited.

In the future, I hope my speech gets better. I would like to be a football player when I grow up. If I become famous, I would talk a lot on interviews and commercials (maybe) and I hope my speech would be better and more fluent.

added December 10, 1998