There's just ssssomething about the way I talk

I talk funny. Everybody who knows me knows this is true, but most are too polite to say anything about it. It's not my fault; I have a space between my two front teeth--nothing huge and David Lettermen-esque, nothing a child might accidentally fall into--but a space nonetheless. And because of that space, I say my S's funny.

I sound like steam escaping, like Satan in the Garden of Eden, trying to convince Adam's girlfriend that God is being completely unreasonable over that whole apple issue. It's the sort of voice that, when I speak earnestly and with incorruptible integrity, people tend to assume I'm lying. It's a shyster's voice, the voice of a carnival barker asserting that everybody wins, the voice of the soon-to-be ex-wife telling her husband she worked up this sweat at the gym, the voice of Nixon assuring the American public he is not a crook, so there!

And that's a shame, because I am, for the most part, honest. No, really. Oh, I suppose I occasionally massage the truth just a bit here and there to make a good story better, or to spare someone's feelings, but just plain lie? Never. Well, almost never. OK, sometimes.

The point is, many times when I am being entirely truthful I'm thought of as a Big Fat Fibber anyway. All because of those darn S's.

My girlfriend, Anne, claims my slight lisp is "cute." Yet I can't help notice she seems dubious when I relate the tale of the time I single-handedly rescued several hostages from a prison camp in Cambodia. (I'll admit it's possible I'm confused on this one and that's just something I saw in a Sylvester Stallone movie. Regardless, my S's make me sound like I'm lying, even when my statements have nothing at all to do with Cambodian prison camps or super-human feats of courage.)

My lisp isn't so pronounced that everyone notices it straight away. I mean, I don't sound like the Grand Marshall in a gay pride parade or anything. But it's there just hissing away for those who take the time to really listen.

Because of this, I drive speech therapists nuts. They can't stand to be around me for more than a few minutes at a time. If I'm at a party and a lady who otherwise seems to be having a great time leaves early after having conversed with me, it's a sure bet she's a speech therapist. They just can't handle the white noise that accompanies my every utterance.

Back in elementary school, the speech therapist would each Thursday pull me from class and drag me down to the broom closet that served as her office. There she would diligently teach me to press my tongue tightly to the top of my gums and repeat lines like, "Suzy sells sea shells by the sea shore" and "Sad sammy sees something silly." Every week I would try my best--mostly because speech therapy, embarrassing though it could be--was still better than arithmetic, which is what all my classmates who could pronounce the word "Swiss" without attracting the attention of nearby rattlesnakes were doing while I tortured my poor speech therapist with unrelenting waves of sibilance.

In the end her only success was teaching me to say "house" instead of "howsh," which is how I pronounced the word prior to her intervention. For that, I owe her a debt of gratitude.

Properly pronouncing "house" may not seem like much of an accomplishment, but at least it's ssssssomething.

Mike Taylor's recent paperback, Looking at the Pint Half Full is available at www.mtrealitycheck.com and as an ebook at Borders, Barnes & Noble and other online book sellers. Contact Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.