Grasping for Words

Writing comes natural for me. Good, bad or mediocre, thoughts flood out of my brain like a stream overflowing its banks in a storm. Handwritten ‘chicken scratch’ notes full of to dos and not-to-forgets that only I can decipher are strewn all over my desk and car. People who know me know this about me, as I’ll often stop mid conversation to pull out a notepad and scribble down an idea.

Over the years, I’ve received not one, but three well intentioned gifts of mini voice recorders to make my life easier, two of them from the same person who forgot they already gave me one. The perfect gift for me, right? Wrong. Because while my thoughts travel from my brain to my writing hand in the express lane of the information highway, there seems to be a perpetual traffic jam on the route leading to my mouth.

I’m not talking about forgetfulness or a bad memory- that’s a topic for another article. This is the frustration when you absolutely, positively know the word you want to say, but can’t verbalize it. Perhaps it goes back to grammar school, where my stuttering required me to spend part of each day with a speech therapist, staring into a mirror sounding out my vowels. I eventually learned to speak slowly so my mouth could catch up with my brain, but lately the awkward pause between knowing what I want to say and saying it has become… excruciatingly… long. So long there could be three topic changes in the conversation before I finally say the word I was trying to say 20 minutes ago. So long you can now pull your short hair back into a ponytail. So long we now have a woman President.

Which pretty much rules me out for game shows like Jeopardy! where contestants ring in milliseconds after the phrase is read, confidently responding not just with the answer, but with the answer in the form of a question. And as Alex Trebek reads: "This poet took the road less traveled and that made all the difference" I change the station before they respond, but I know the answer. ‘Its what’s his name’ I think to myself, ‘that poet who wrote the other poem about woods and how tired he is or something like that. You know, the one who likes fences’. Finally, at 2 a.m. I awaken from a restless sleep and WHO IS ROBERT FROST? comes shooting out of my mouth in a tired triumph, seven hours too late for the bonus round.

This happens at the office also, as the staff participates in an impromptu brainstorming session when I innocently ask "Who was that guy who sold the sports directory a few years ago?" hoping to jog loose the name teetering on my memory shelf just out of reach. I quickly learn the danger of word association as a team sport, and pray no one at work ever forgets my name. "You mean that short guy who thought he was so cool?" "Wasn’t he the one who use to stink like onions?" "No, he she means that bald guy who use to fake call in sick every Monday." JOHN SMITH I finally scream emphatically as the name comes to me, mercifully putting a stop to this impromptu personality assassination.

As frustrating as this stalled speech pattern can be, when camouflaged as a well placed pregnant pause, it sometimes works to my benefit as people helpfully insert their thoughts which are often wittier than the words I was grasping for in the first place. In a way, I’ve become a walking Madlibs game, with my (adjective) friends inserting missing (plural noun) to complete my (adjective) thoughts. And when I say my friends know me so well they finish my sentences, I really mean it.