Last week, I talked about my love for American Sign Language, a form of communication without any sound. I think that the main reason I love this language is because I was born with a speech impediment. Growing up, I was bullied because of the way I talked. My mom always told me to embrace it and let it shine, but there will always be a set of words that I am completely uncomfortable saying. I think that the reason I have been most uncomfortable with them is because I do not hear myself talking differently. I hear myself saying the words exactly the same as how anybody else says them. The only time I hear a difference is when my voice is played back on recording.
"Girl", "world", "Carl", "Pearl" and many other “rl” words are very difficult for me to pronounce, especially when they are being said individually. When I say these words in the middle of a sentence, then they can normally blend in enough, to where people don't notice the struggles that I go through with them. When I was little, my mom hired a speech therapist for me because she didn't want me to have such a big insecurity at such a young age. Nothing we did worked, no matter how many hours I sat down to practice talking.
I am very happy with the friends and family I have now, and I'm not much into meeting new people. I never have been. I have recently come to terms with the fact that I do not like meeting new people because the first question they always ask is, "Where are you from?". They don't ask because of the way I look or dress or act; they ask because they want to know where my "accent" is from. When I said that I was from a small town outside of Annapolis, Maryland, they never believe me. Why would I lie about being from Crofton? People would say, "No, you have to be from England", or, "Really? I would have guessed Boston."
Just to get it out: I have never set foot in either of these places.
I am now 19 years old and I have finally gotten used to the fact that people are always going to ask about it. So why not have fun with it? This summer I worked at Candy Kitchen in Bethany Beach, Delaware. My boss did not realize I had anything that sounded anything close to an accent so she was shocked when a customer asked me about it. What shocked her even more was that when the customer asked, I responded by saying that I was born in London and lived there until I was six years old. She couldn't believe that she didn't know that information, but I quickly told her that I may have stretched the truth a bit (as in... I have never been to this foreign land). I told her that it happens all the time but she didn't believe me. Not even an hour later, another couple came into the shop and asked me the exact same question. My boss surely believed me then.
Whenever I tell somebody that I was born in England, I let them think about it for a while and then tell them the truth. I guess when I got to college I forgot to let my friend Brennan know about my little white lie and he did not believe me when I said that I was going home for a weekend. He said, "Why would you go home for a weekend? It will take you all weekend to get there!" At first I was very confused, but soon I realized that I forgot to tell him that I was not, in fact, from England. He told me that all this time, seven months of school, he thought that I was a foreign exchange student.
Some aspects of yourself are hard to accept. Yet, after 19 years, I believe that I have accepted having a unique voice that I can be proud of. My name is Megan Kotelchuck and I am proud of who I am and what I sound like.
