"Could you tell me which way to Bloor and..."He1 to get the next word out, a pained look on his face, but I knew better than to finish his2 for him.
"... Bathurst?"he said after several3 of struggling. When I started to answer, he told me that he didn't actually need to know. He was practising stammering(口吃)4 , he explained, hoping to become more 5 doing so around strangers.
I6 with excitement. "Are you doing that because it's National Stammering Awareness Day?" I asked, always7 to connect with other people who stammer. When the man asked how I knew that, I said that I grew up with a stammer.
He8 , with a longing look:"And I suppose your stammer has magically9 since then?"
His question gave me pause.
I understood why he assumed this—when compared to his fairly10 stammer, I sounded fluent, stammer-free. But even as we spoke, my stammer had influenced my speech. For example, I'd11 International Stammering Awareness Day as National Stammering Awareness Day to avoid the tricky front vowel sound at the beginning of the word—a sound I12 to struggle with now.
And while it's true that my stammer was more 13 when I was a child, this was partially because I'd since found workarounds(解决办法) for difficult words and sounds,helping me14 the worst of it.
When I answered his question, I settled on the simple15 that I had grown out of my stammer. However, deep inside, I had only learned to deal with what life might offer strategically.
