While I was cleaning out my room at moms house a few weeks back I found a cassette tape that my dad had recorded a conversation that him and I had back when I was 3 and we were taping up my room to paint it pink. I just barely remember doing this, I remember a day where he recorded us talking but couldn’t remember why or what we were doing. Before I go into what was said on this tape I feel I need to explain some things about me so you can understand just how far I have come in my almost 27 years of life.
If you are family or a family friend you all know I was 17 days overdue and mom wanted me out, and that I have some medical and learning problems. Nothing to drastic but I have always been hard of hearing and very much dyslexic. Because of my hearing problems I have a speech problem, it’s not so noticeable today but it does rear its ugly head every now and then. When I was little I had to go through speech therapy so I could learn how to pronounce ph and th and for some weird reason if I remember correctly sp. I only say this because I couldn’t say spoon, it came out poon. Needless to say I had a very hard time pronouncing simple words and my parents bless their souls probably couldn’t understand 99% of the stuff I was saying. In fact mom likes to tell me that my brother was the only one that could ever figure out what I was saying if they couldn’t. Today after being in speech therapy from the age of 3 to about 10 years I can now say almost any word without a problem, yes there is still a few that I stumble over and some that I will never try to say cause I know I will never get them right. But I have learned to cope with my hearing loss and speech problems.
Now back to the conversation that was recorded. As far as I can figure out the reasons dad recorded the conversation was probably to A.) Have a record of me as a little girl, B.) Get me talking and help me learn how to pronounce words and C.) To show me just how far I came along in my speech problems. Apparently from what dad says on the tape I hardly talked while in speech therapy and only said 2 word sentences and he was basically doing the tape to show them that I actually did know how to speak more then what I was while in therapy.
There is a part in the tape where my dad is moving the chest of drawers to put tape behind it and he asks me to say it and needless to say what I say sounds nothing like chest of drawers. Dad laughs and says you have problems with that don’t you and little me says yeah and then I change the subject to monsters on my wall. To this day I very vividly remember laying in bed when I was 3 and looked over at the wall where my nightlight was and saw this shadow that looked like a troll go running across my wall above the nightlight. Dad goes on to say there’s no monster in your room is there? And I respond with no just on my walls. Which he responds with “well there can’t be monsters in your room because you have Max the germen Sheppard guard dog and he won’t let them get you and you have me and I will save you from them” I responded with “yeah you will save me”.
Dad says towards the end of the tape that I have no idea how much me sitting there talking to him is going to help me in the long run and that by talking to him nonstop while he was taping up my room that I proved my teacher wrong about not talking. I believe the reason I didn’t talk much as a young kid was that I was and still am shy and a lot of it has to do with the fact that when I was little people couldn’t understand me.
I’m thankful that I was able to go to speech therapy to help me learn how to pronounce words; yes I will never be able to say Chest of drawers right in a million years. It’s just one of the many words that I still have trouble with. When you first meet me, you would never know that I was the same little girl whose parents couldn’t even understand her. To this day my mom still corrects me when I mess up a word which happens every now and again. I get nervous when talking to new people and actually have to stop and think about what I am going to say so I can pronounce it right. I will never be the world’s best speller because of my hearing problems but I muddle through and do the best that I can with what god gave me and spell check. But I have come a long way in my almost 27 years of life and I am proud of what I managed to accomplish, even if it was just that my parents and the world could understand me when I talk.
