The King Who Overcame His Stuttering When The People Needed Him The Most
At a time when the world was about to plunge into war
Everyone waited in silence as he struggled with the first word.
It looked easy, an article, the three-letter word — ‘the’. He couldn’t read it. Out of impatience, the teacher read the word and like a horse, he leaped over the first three words. We needed to give him time. But our teacher of English didn’t have time.
We were going through the subject’s setbook. It was either Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s The River Between or Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. I can hardly recall. What I do remember is his struggle with completing sentences.
Nobody in the class knew he had a stuttering problem. When you interacted with him, he could talk seamlessly. No pauses. Born in the Nyanza region of Kenya, he grew up around a proud people. The Luo people of Kenya are known for their pride, confidence, and accent-riddled tone whenever they speak the Queen’s language.
Yet, he got stuck mid-sentence. No, before the sentence took off.
Stutters are some of the most silent ones in a crowd. They are also some of the strongest-willed people you will ever meet. You might not know the beat, but their lives are their fight song.
The King’s Speech
I have a voice!
King George VI, the father of the longest-serving British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, shouted at his speech therapist while rehearsing for the coronation. He was quick to anger, a problem sparked by his stuttering.
He couldn’t recall any time when he spoke fluently. His brothers, on the other hand, were nothing like him.
Inside the palace, flirting was a skill one needed to perfect to mingle with the other royal blood. A midway stutter can convert you into the subject of ridicule. You could easily get dismissed if, like a quiver full of arrows, you didn’t have your words, ready to load them on your bow.
He had the height. He had the face. He had the royal blood flowing through his veins. He even had the words inside his head, but they got stuck coming out of his mouth. His brothers often made fun of him when he was small. His father encouraged it.
Let it out, boy!
He would urge him.
It was never that easy.
After a series of unconventional methods by supposed elite speech therapists, he landed one who was an excellent guide and who would later become one of his long-trusting friends. As a therapist, Lionel Logue believed nobody was born a stutter. From a physiological view, it made a tonne of sense. In contrast, the trainer before him had once forced him to take a mouthful of marbles and then forced the future king to read. Medicine was a growing profession.
It was later found out that Lionel, the one who got to him, the one who smoothed his transitions when he spoke, was not a doctor. He would tell him to sing whenever he could if the word only waited for a beat, or change the first word to alter the consonant that stalled his progress. P- p- p- would then become uh-p-eople.
Cussing too would help. With pain, cussing comes naturally. Stuttering is a different kind of pain. It’s one heavy with embarrassment, the kind one would want to overcome if only to prove a point. So Lionel would encourage cussing in the middle of the sentence to reduce the turbulence in his speech. And he would break into a mighty deluge of cuss words, much to his relief.
He’s got more guts than all his brothers combined.
These were the words his father said about him, but not directly to him. He said them when he was on his deathbed. These could have been the words he needed to hear from his father to reassure him to continue with his classes.
His other untoward pillar of strength was his speech therapist. Lionel, initially a tutor, later became a friend. The king would lean onto this friendship to deliver the speech that would unite England just before the beginning of World War II.
When he was crowned King, placards circulated throughout the city, showing a lack of faith in him.
God save the king!
They read.
But when Europe was breaking into parts and Hitler planned to extend his armies past his national borders, England looked to its leader for hope. Minutes before delivering the nationwide address, Winston Churchill, yet to become the prime minister at the time, confessed to having a speech impediment, one that he overcame. That must have boosted the king’s morale even more.
Then, after the fourth blink of the red light, the nation stood in silence, ears tuned to the radio station, the BBC. His wife held her breath, outside the booth, clutching tightly the hands of her two daughters. In the same way that a single word could make a heart open, she wanted the world to see the man he fell in love with.
They all hang on to the faith of their King first before hanging onto every word he spoke that day. Lionel was with him through every sentence. When he uttered the last word, his wife exhaled heavily with relief — he had done it!
He then walked out to greet the crowd, roaring in adulation. He proved to the world that:
I can only have one match
But I can make an explosion
Without mincing words, the stuttering king restored hope to his people.
Who will speak for the stutters?
Morgan Housel, the international bestselling author, took 30 years to overcome his stuttering.
I was a fan of his simple yet powerful writing but didn’t know he had these demons to overcome. One of the people he looked up to spoke like the reverent economist he was. All the while, Housel uttered to himself: I want to do that. Wanting is one thing, doing is another, yet, he had been stuttering since he was a kid.
Stutters have no awareness month although the need for its awareness is now important more than ever. They don’t have known spokespersons. You can be one for them. The international stuttering awareness day is the 22nd of October, but why wait until that day to represent them?
Ideal leaders have an archetype. They are tall. They command respect whenever they speak. And when they speak, everybody is silent. Nobody looks down with horror, they look up with admiration.
Autobots look to Optimus Prime at their fine hour before riding with him to battle. The Avengers lean to Captain Rogers for inspiration when all hope seems lost. Arsgard relies on its gods whenever trouble stirs their world.
Nobody looks to a stutter.
Silence is golden, and speech is silver. Nobody knows this saying better than a stutter. They prefer their silence. The words remain in their dome, even when they try to release them. They are misfits who face the greatest challenges among a social species.
Thus, that afternoon, as he struggled to read the book, I didn’t like the impatience our teacher had. Several times he would pick me to read a passage in a story. My mother would often nominate me to read inside the church more than once. As an intern, I would do the PowerPoint presentations without faltering. I never had these challenges. But that afternoon, within the four walls of Form 3 East, I didn’t want to be picked.
I wanted us to be patient with him.
Essentially, every time they struggle to complete that word, we witness a fight, one they believe they can win, even when at that time, before a crowd, it all feels hopeless. The stuttering phases echo the words of Rachel Platten:
And I don’t really care if nobody else believes
’Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me
If Lionel was not patient with King George VI, we might have had a different history other than the one where Hitler was defeated. If we are not patient with our friends who have this surmountable problem, we indirectly give up on them. Are we even friends if we don’t extend this show of confidence?
Morgan Housel was a smart student throughout school. Had he not discovered the tricks he used to beat his stuttering, he would have given the wrong impression in an interview. You can have a sparkling CV but before an interview panel, your words can fail you.
How would a man approach a potential partner? When you’re smitten by someone, even the most eloquent can have trouble speaking. If you already have a stutter, how would you summit the mountain of a demand to make the first step?
Our culture creates little time for stutters. It groups them into the misfits' corner. Time is money, so why wait for them to finish?
And yet, we all need time. Time to build our reputation. Time to build our confidence. Time to forgive. Time to heal. Time to celebrate. Time to mourn. We all need time. This does not exclude stutters.
We need to give them time to fight through their words.
What I’m trying to say is…
The King’s Speech is an absolute movie recommendation. If I ruled the world, I would make it mandatory for everyone to watch it. As Morgan Housel reports:
The movie The King’s Speech was the closest most people have come to realizing what it’s like to stutter.
A boxing fight has 12 rounds. This is orders of magnitude less than the number of fights a stutter needs to overcome. As long as they live, they are always in a fight. It’s a unique space because it does not always translate to getting better with every fight.
They have the words already formed. But their bodies fight them. Yet, every day, they wake up and aerate their voice boxes. As King George VI shouted to his tutor: ‘I have a voice’, so do they say to the world:
And all those things I didn’t say
Were wrecking balls inside my brain
I will scream them loud tonight
Can you hear my voice this time?
I cannot speak for them.
But I know what I can do.
I will write for them.
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube