Something rather embarrassing happened to me a week ago, and it’s unfortunately the latest in a similar string of events. No, I didn’t shit myself in public, or anything like that. During breakfast with my girlfriend and one of her friends, I was trying to tell a story about the hilarious Blackest Night in 60 Seconds webcomic. All of a sudden, I started stuttering and mumbling rather severely in mid-sentence. Worse yet, when I tried to stop talking, I couldn’t! After a few seconds, I managed to stem the tide of unintelligible gibberish by clamping my mouth shut, but the damage was done. I was shocked and horrified, and my companions felt bad for me. I’m just lucky that this didn’t happen as I was making a public speech or something! (Okay, so I don’t make public speeches, but you get the idea.)

This incident was the straw that broke the camel’s back, which is why I’ve decided to open up and write about it. While nothing this bad has happened to me before, I have had speaking problems over the past few years, and they may be increasing in severity and frequency. Sometimes there’s been mild stuttering (a few syllables here and there), but other times I have weird slips of the tongue. For example, I’ll mispronounce words because similar-sounding ones are in the same sentence (e.g., “fresh fish” becomes “frish fish”). This is really annoying.

I seriously doubt these are Freudian slips, as those are supposed to make some kind of subconscious sense. The correct psychological term is apparently “lapsus,” which broadly refers to speaking and writing errors. Writing errors are far less common for me; and since we live in an age of spellcheck and other corrective aids, they’re far less likely to get through even when they do occur! The most common mistake I make is that when I’m writing an address label, I’ll sometimes write letters too quickly. That is, while writing “Main Street,” I might write “Main Stret” by accident; I wrote the final “t” too soon. Perhaps my mind’s going faster than my writing or speaking?

But I digress. The only treatment I’m administering right now for my speech problem is simple: I’m just trying my hardest to talk less. (This will come as a source of great relief to my friends and family, I’m sure. They’ve been trying to get me to shut up for most of my life!) If I’m asked a question or otherwise have an idea to get across, I’ll try to speak slower and use simpler words, to lessen the likelihood of me tripping over them.

Due to the sporadic nature of these incidents, I hardly think they qualify as a serious speech problem, but it’s become annoying enough that I may seek medical assistance. Since it’s been happening more often, at least by my estimates, it’s only a matter of time before I either severely embarrass myself or others in public, or worse yet, screw up something important by failing to communicate properly.