Tongue Surgery and Writing > Talking

I feel like since my last blog post was focused on Pokemon (which I am intensely proud of an have no plans of deleting), I nonetheless owe a more serious one. Also, since I doubt anyone is really going to read this one if they already read the Pokemon one, I feel like I can be a bit more open here. Here we go.

Hold your tongue down to the bottom of your mouth. Now, keep it held down and try to talk. Feels weird, right? Apparently, when I was born, my tongue was attached to the bottom of my mouth. It took until I was around two years old for this to get discovered, when I said "I love you, Mom" to my shocked mother. This led me to having tongue surgery, which was successful. Whenever my mom tells me the story, she mentions that the doctors were having trouble waking me up afterwards, so they called her in to try and wake me up, which she was able to do. Cute story.

However, I feel like the damage to my speech was already done. I had speech therapy for a while when I was a kid and I think it helped for a little while. I am still really conscious of it, though, and when I get really excited, I talk so fast that it is pretty much a language that only my mom and older brother can understand. This is partially why I don't like talking to new people but why I can talk so much when I feel comfortable with someone. I don't feel like its really that bad or that big of a deal, but it usually causes me to avoid small talk and not make long, drawn out statements when a short answer is possible. Shorter is better in this case. I think this is also why I like writing so much and why I end up doing so well in writing class. In writing, you have the chance to go back, reword, and generally rework what you are saying or trying to get across. No awkwardness, no stuttering, no jumbled words. Just one of those crazy things.

I'm pretty sure that a lot of my teachers feel like I'm unattentive or don't care when I'm not talking in class, but that's really not who I am. Even if I wasn't so self conscious about this, I don't like being stared at. I don't have the compulsive need to make sure everyone in a half mile radius knows how smart I am or how much I studied the text book before class. That's just not me. I really hate people who have to do that. I feel like this could end up being a rant deserving of its own post, so I'll leave it there. To sum up the blog post: tongue surgery leads to speech therapy which leads to social awkwardness but enhanced writing skills.