Sounding Funny
Sounding Funny
Bullying is a problem in America that gets very little attention, and that needs to change. It turns friendly, outgoing children into shy, socially inept shells of what appears to be a child. Kathleen Vail, in her essay "Words That Wound," gives several extreme examples of what can happen when children are sent to school each day having to put up with being bullied. For example, one boy killed himself in front of the class that had taunted him for years. Another boy was hit in the head and kicked in the stomach by the boy who bullied him and died two days later of his injuries (328). These are very severe examples of what can happen, but I grew up being bullied and I know that it makes a huge impact on a person's social and communicative abilities.
There are bullies and there are victims, and I was a victim. When I was younger, I had a speech impediment and could not pronounce words with the letters r, w, or l in them. I went to speech therapy classes to help me learn to speak correctly, and though they benefited me greatly in the end, I hated them. The teacher was very nice and helpful, and the classes were fun, but when I was on my way back to my real class I knew that I was going to sit among the people who mocked me incessantly because I "talked funny" and they would call me names, like "retard," or they would mimic my way of speaking. If I was asked a question in class, even though I answered correctly, my words sounded awkward, my cheeks turned pink and I would notice other kids snickering with each other. When I was called upon to read aloud in class, I would be painstakingly careful with every word because I was so afraid of "sounding funny." It would take me five minutes to read a short paragraph out loud and I would stumble over the words as if they were a foreign language, making it seem like I could not read even though I could read lightning fast when I read silently. Again, the kids laughed at me, "The wetawd...
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