the b&v issue sure has gotten a lot of attention here……

Booze and vomiting in your chapter, eh? Talk about being statesmen-in-training! LOL

Depending on who was around, I remember, at school, my peers and teachers would never think me a chatterbox, as I rarely spoke any more than absolutely necessary, sometimes not even that much. I talked a lot more with my dad, but I had the whole school day to plan just exactly what I would say. Unfortunately, this had the side-effect of countless incomplete assignments from elementary until high school.

I used to be known for talking extremely fast, particularly in the morning before school with friends. More consistently, I am known to talk especially loudly, though I don’t notice it particularly.

More when I need a keyboard is when I need clarification on instructions, when I am overwhelmed, as I get in most crowds, and anytime I need to come up with spontaneous speech. Without a keyboard, when saying spontaneous things I don’t have prepared stock phrases for, then I use all kinds of fillers, and pause for very long periods of time.

It was very odd for me to write that but I knew it was the only way to remember and get a better grade………

TI

I used to talk extremely fast as well, to the point that people usually had to look to my mum for a translation. I wasn’t nervous and I’ve never taken any drugs, so I think it was just the way I talked, My mum taught me to slow down and I think I have a standard speed of talking now, although I do sound about six :{.

We also developed this sort of personal idiom as it became harder and harder to come out with any kind of speech that meant what we were really thinking in the presence of other people– it was a sort of hyper-speed nonsense talk with a lot of jokes and quotations from other people mixed into it. In fact, there were a lot of situations in which we’d get a kind of uncontrollable compulsion to make a joke or say something silly, even when it wasn’t very funny. It seemed to be a sort of triggered reaction, in the same way as when teachers asked “does anyone know the answer to this question?”, we’d often blurt out something uncontrollably regardless of whether it made any sense, but… we never quite figured out the exact circumstances of what elicited it.

…and the fact that we know that certain kinds of triggered reactions are still there– like the blurting out whatever comes into our head when asked certain types of questions– and we can’t always control them at all times, makes us really wish we could type more often so other people wouldn’t have that control over us.

I really do think that my struggles with all kinds of speaking are the result of difficulty of putting what I SEE into words. I really doubt that most people understand exactly how taxing it is. I think nerves play a role, especially now as I have begun to get physically ill whenever some kind of public speaking performance is requested, but I also think that the nerves are a result of a lifetime of mocking at previous attempts at public speaking.

I am working on it, though.