For six months, Mary Nixon and 10 other orphans were relentlessly belittled for every little imperfection in their speech to test the theory that children become stutterers because of psychological pressure. ''I don't think anybody today likes the idea of seeing orphans, children, used that way,'' said Jane Fraser, president of the Stuttering Foundation in Memphis. ''But it's really important to keep things in historical perspective.''

It was a class with Renee Gladman, week one, 7/4/2005, where we discussed abstraction as an important element to explore place and time.  It was this class in particular that stuttering was first introduced to me as empowerment over impediment.  After several days of stuttering through going around the room and reading, just like in 8^th grade when I would try to time my bathroom breaks for when it was my turn to read just so they would pass over me, only to return and have Dr. Farkis, a.k.a. Hitler, make me read anyway.  All the girls I liked were in that class.  Michelle, a thin, considerate brunette who gained nearly a hundred pounds after high school, Audra who had two kids and is married to an FBI agent, and Leslie, who I saw once at the mall years after high school while I was high on LSD and even then didn’t have the courage to say hello.  Long story short, Kilroy told me he loved when I spoke.  Said it sounded like music, and that no one he’d ever met sounded like that.  I miss that guy.