November 20, 2013 Meeting Update

At this Wednesday night meeting of the South Orange County NSA group, although there were only 3 members present, it was an interesting & enjoyable evening. (For those of you who didn't attend - you know this goes on your permanent record don't you? You can redeem yourselves by attending next time.) One attendee was a new member from San Gabriel who works in Irvine. We began with introductions where people stated what they would do if they won 100 million dollars in the lottery. Two people said they would invest the money and/or buy properties. The third member said it would allow his wife to retire. We can all dream, right?

This was another "Public Speaking" session using Table Topics. Members were free to use any fluency techniques they were working on. The Table Topics subjects were: "Gaming: Your ThoughtsOn It",  "The Best Book You Ever Read" & "What You Would Do If You Knew An 8.0 Earthquake Was Going To Hit In 30 Minutes." Some lively discussions followed. The person who had the earthquake topic said there is a species of fish that live in very deep ocean water where there are tectonic plates. When the plates rub against each other as they do preceding an earthquake, the fish are forced to the surface & can sometimes be found on beaches. Some of these beached fish have been recently found on California beaches. Is "The Big One" coming? The person who had the gaming topic knew practically nothing about it, but thought excessive gaming may be taking the place of human interaction for some gamers.

The familiar subject of how hard it is to transfer fluency techniques from the speech therapist's safe environment to the "real" world was discussed. This may be one area where all persons who stutter agree.

We talked a little on what helps us in general to be fluent. The new person said he has a non-stuttering friend who talks very slowly. When he is with this friend, it helps him greatly in improving his fluency.

We also talked a little on the effect of foreign languages on stuttering, as each person has a foreign language in their background - Chinese, Spanish or Italian. We pretty much agreed that stutterers stutter the same amount in whatever language they use.

The next Wednesday meeting is scheduled for December 18. However, it may be canceled as it is very close to the holidays and attendance would probably be low or even zero, with only the group leader showing up. Emails will go out as usual if the meeting is cancelled.

Happy Thanksgiving. Drive carefully. Don't watch too much football. Don't drink too much. Don't eat too much turkey - for you vegans/vegetarians, it's hard to eat too much tofu, so go ahead & indulge yourselves in a soy orgy.