We all agreed never to speak of it ever again. The past was in the past and the traumatic event should stay there. For over 55 years, it has done just that. Buried forever … or so I thought.
Last night a picture came to me framed in a dream. Reaching out, I grabbed and held onto the corners bringing it into focus. Suddenly it was torn away, fading back into the cold night, but the damage had already been done. I started to remember.
Still holding onto fragments of the memory in my mind, I awoke in a cold sweat and started to cry. Not a dream. It had been a nightmare. My nightmare. A repressed memory of something that happened while we lived a long, long time ago on that old familiar street not so far away called Flamingo.
Kids can be cruel, especially to those they perceive to be different. As kindergarteners, Twin Brother Mark and I were different. We talked in what is commonly called “Twin Speak,” a language used by twins understood by few others. Mark and I shared our private language and were happy … until we started attending school.
In kindergarten, we were pulled out of class for the long walk to a special speech therapy room. For us, nothing in that windowless, dimly lit room with dirty, tan walls was special. It was what nightmares were made of. And for an hour each school day, we were trapped inside.
The speech pathologist was nice enough as she explained how all the equipment worked. While wearing headphones, we tried to repeat words, listened to sounds telling her which ear we heard them in, and did mouth and tongue exercises. She said this would help us not to stumble over words so others could understand.
It was hard because we knew what we were saying. How could others not? Being only 6 years old at the time, headphones, tuning forks, and other strange sound equipment were all scary to Mark and me. But what was really frightening, and the root of my nightmare, was “The Box.”
The Box was a sound booth about the size of a refrigerator placed in one corner of the room. Inside, a small padded bench provided little comfort. The walls and ceiling were also padded, allowing no outside sound to enter and, we thought, no air. From the ceiling, a single pair of headphones dangled down. A small window in the door provided the only connection to the outside world and the way our teacher could peer in making sure we were all right.
I assure you, as soon as we entered that box we were not all right. We were terrified.
Other students made fun of us simply because we were different in the way we talked and because we needed “special” help. Painful visits to that room and time inside that box lasted only for one school year, but comments like, “Your teeth are too big for words to get around them,” “Tongue-tied,” or “You talk funny” inflicted pain that lasted a lifetime.
After that year, because Mark and I were now “fixed and normal,” our parents decided we would never speak of our time with the speech pathologist. The memory of her and that box buried forever.
Last week, I read a book to Little One and her kindergarten class, something I try to do every couple of weeks. Walking down the fifth-grade hallway, I glanced at the placard affixed to one of the doors. My knees almost buckled. “Speech Pathology.” I was unable to move. At that moment, the speech pathologist walked out, noticed my blank stare and asked, “Can I help you?”
Looking past her, I peered into a windowless, dimly lit room with dirty, tan walls. In the far corner stood “The Box.” Through the small window in its door, I saw headphones dangling from the ceiling. Tongue-tied, I mumbled incoherently, but somehow, she understood.
Smiling, she turned and walked back into her room. Before the door closed, I looked past her again. The room had changed, now brightly lit with cream paint. Pictures of art with encouraging words underneath hung on two walls and a bank of windows flanked another. The box from my childhood was long gone, but the memory remains.
Even today some words can’t get around my big teeth, and I have great empathy for anyone with speech difficulties. I’ve walked in your shoes. I’ve been placed in the same box just because I was different. Being different isn’t something to be ashamed of. Not something to be locked away and forgotten. It took a long time to truly understand that.
After 55 years, I hope the way kids treat kids who are different has changed. Bullies come in many forms — not just the big kid who lives down the street.
[Rick Ryckeley has been writing stories since 2001. To read more of Rick’s stories, visit his blog: storiesbyrick.wordpress.com.]
