Dysfluent

This piece was good for me, I think. I’ve encountered different people with stuttering over time, and some of them I was kind too and some not. I had a group when I was younger that was both in church and scouts together. I never hung out with them alone but it was essentially my “friend group”. There was one guy who had a strong stutter. As a whole we often didn’t treat him well, and I regret it looking back.

Now I have a student who stutters a lot, due to having a stroke in his youth. I find it a lot easier to have patience with him and listen to his thoughts. He’s also an incredibly prolific writer (having written over 200 scripts each over 20 pages for a tv show idea he has.)

This game presents the experiences of one person with a stutter. They have a day to go through a list of chores and tasks.

I thought it was effective. It does have timed text but I made it work by playing it on my phone during a very boring work meeting where having it long and drawn out was a benefit. And I imagined the game itself as someone with a stutter and practiced being patient with them. After all, a lot of things that you would never do or like normally are acceptable or good when dealing with disabilities (like someone with IBS having frequent smelly farts).

My ex wife and son both use wheelchairs so it was interesting to see how similar some experiences are across disability, especially with other people under or over estimating the difficult of tasks. (Like “come to my house! It only has one step up, a few inches, that shouldn’t be a problem, right?)

So overall, lots of polish and good work and helped me reflect on life and saved me from a boring meeting.