Getting Back to Normal
Mostly... at least where talking is concerned.
After encountering Newt, Sid was made even more aware of his own speech impediment. Sick of sounding like a stroke victim, he decided it was time to buckle down, really practice. He couldn't quite bring himself to throw out his store of liquor, but he could at least put a little note on the fridge warning himself against it. He could do this. Stutters could be overcome, he knew, but that was Newt's problem... He had a whole host of sounds to relearn how to pronounce. It was just a matter of getting used to the new jaw structure, and working around it, and not stopping constantly in the middle of sentences to correct himself. The trick was, he knew, not to think so damn much about it, but that was where casual conversation was concerned.
In the meantime, it was back to his old nemesis the mirror. He spent hours a day for nearly a week just standing in front of it making noises. Hard as he tried, the odd hissed or lisped s still slipped through, but it'd be just his luck that with teeth like his there'd be no avoiding it. T's and D's and other hard sounds got a little easier, so long as he didn't approach them like some kind of jump he couldn't impossibly clear.
He paced through his duplex, reading parts of old manuscripts and wondering why the hell he'd ever thought the writing was decent. He read out loud as he typed, which helped to space the words up a little. He didn't type
that fast. Only problem was reading aloud as he typed seemed to make his stories even more disjointed.
But it was progress. And the less he thought about the way his tongue wagged, the way his teeth were brought up just inside his line of sight, the more he could manage to get most of his words out properly. Spit was still a problem, but other people could just deal wioth that.
When it was over, and he realized he'd barely left his duplex in all that time, he felt pleased with himself. He still couldn't stand the sight of his own face in the mirror, but he'd done well.
He rewarded himself with whiskey and painkillers.
Baby steps. He'd work on
that problem later... like when it really felt like a problem.
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