March 27 Meeting Update

There were 10 persons present at the March 27, 2014 meeting including a new member - welcome Thabith. This was the 1st of the 2nd meetings of the month to be held at the new time, day & place. It was very gratifying for there to be such a good turnout. Thanks to those who attended. 

Along with introductions, we opened the meeting with the question: Which person(s) in history do you most admire & why? Some interesting & unusual choices were given including: the framers of the Constitution & Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. (No, Jimmy Page didn't help draft the Constitution, he's British.) A rousing chorus of "Stairway to Heaven" ensued - just kidding; I wanted to see if you were paying attention. 

Next (seriously), a group discussion was started based on the following premise: You come across an old fashioned oil lamp covered with dust. Thinking it might be a valuable antique, you start wiping off the dust & lo & behold - you guessed it - a magic genie appears! This is a different kind of genie, however, than the usual garden variety genie. This genie only appears to persons who stutter. Also, instead of the usual 3 wishes he only grants 1 wish (he's a cheap genie), and with these added caveats: the wish has to be directly connected to your stuttering (e.g. you can't wish you win the lottery & stutter when you claim the money, etc.), and you're not allowed to wish that you don't stutter anymore. What would you wish?A lot of interesting wishes were put forth, many around the themes of: saying whatever you wanted to say whether you stuttered or not; not worrying so much about what others think of you when you stutter; & not being so preoccupied with your stuttering all the time. Three of the more novel wishes were: "I wish my stuttering made me irresistible to the opposite sex";

 "I wish everyone else in the world stuttered"; & "I wish I held the patent to a magic pill that cured stuttering, started a drug company that produced it & got rich". A very thoughtful wish was: "I wish I could make it easier for children & teens who stutter so they wouldn't have to go through what I did." 

A side discussion also took place about the efficacy of drugs designed to help ease stuttering. Two of the members that had direct experience with some of these drugs that have been prescribed by a researcher at UC Irvine talked about their experiences. 

There was a little bit of time left over, so one person did a Table Topics presentation on "Favorite Kind of Music" What was learned from this was that nobody but the speaker had ever heard of Bill Haley & the Comets. (How is this possible?) The group redeemed itself somewhat by some members admitting they had heard of Jerry Lee Lewis. Maybe there's still hope.

The next meeting will be on Thursday, April 10, at 5:45 PM at Kaiser Permanente, 6 Willard, Irvine, 92604. Room 105 (near reception desk).