Teddy Bear

 Teddy Bear: A companion in the Dark, giving care and comfort when I feel alone…

     When I was young, in grade school, the rudiments of my linguistics obsession began. I had problems talking. The world couldn’t understand me, and the speech impediments had already plagued my early life with insecurities. I grew further and further into the depths of my own uncertainty and I couldn’t communicate to others my difficulties and uncomfortable situations. I meant well, but the world couldn’t see that, they simply heard a chaotic ramble of vocal patterns which made no sense to my fellow peers. Frustration built up in my life and much to the worse the more the stress of not being able to talk efficiently was brought to my attention the harder speaking became.

    The speech pathologist at my elementary school explained that my speech was rapid-- as was my thinking--because my brain was processing too fast (especially when I was/am nervous!). Sitting in one of the top city schools for the gifted (another word for “dork-Ville” or “future losers of America are us”) in the state of New York, I had the unfair advantage of the top vocal coaches in the country educating young brain-iac me how to rid myself of stuttering etc and try to find my voice (something which I desperately needed). The authors in the books had voices, the other children had voices and I… I wanted a voice as well… this represented a choice, a life, something which big people all shared but I had been neglected to receive at birth (or at least I thought I had!).

  
   I had oodles of anxiety. Life hadn’t always been good and I hadn’t been received particularly well by others. I had hope that I could learn, but even today that dream has not materialized…yet… Speech was hard, others wouldn’t listen to what sounded to them like disorganized projections emitting from my lips… I couldn’t communicate with a world that couldn’t hear. I was too quick and desperately needed to slow down so slower functioning people could get an idea and catch up with me. I moved too fast so every day I had to work with my new teacher, there in the corner of the classroom.

    I chose the big circle table in the main class area to study with my speech pathologist. Because I had a strange adaptation and passion in the field of English/literature, that avenue of study was chosen as the optimal time to interrupt for my new, more important task of learning to communicate properly. I liked sitting with the other children so I didn’t feel so strange, there off slightly to the side, I felt particularly uncomfortable in the other teaching places, but here I felt more secure and in my element in the comfort of my fellow school mates. The other kids were cool with my weird adaptations, and seemed to kind of enjoy the strange tactics implemented with the exercises and rather extreme techniques that the instructor provided.

    I used to laugh at saying “bad words” that others did not expect in the middle of sentences. It was comical to put something exotic and profane in the midst of casual speaking, and duly remarked, many learned to actually pay attention to even me! It was amazing…I slowed down and people suddenly understood me. They listened and for the most part I had a voice with something small to say. I finally had a perspective to express and a means to express it! I learned the dynamics of language, the purpose of communication, and acquired a basis for adapting etymological and/or word meaning studies in the field of linguistics. The latter was extremely important for who I was to become, for this passion remained for the duration of my life.

    The desire to understand how words and concepts really worked in the scope of man, shaped the rest of my days. I learned to associate more freely, and often more cautiously then others, admiring the similarities and differences in the roots of languages. What a people believed, what they desired, the core necessities of communal living-- thinking was shaped by language, but language was formed by necessity. Man needed to indicate his needs, his hopes and fears to another, and thus a utter of meaning was born. Co-operation and Love now became common place if one was to survive more efficiently. Man was the thinking animal, the reflective thinking species that emerged from a definitive awakening and would not return to the confines of a silent world.