Speech Impediment

I have a speech impediment. I never knew it. It came as quite a shock to me when I discovered it at the ripe old age of 39, a shock to learn that I may not be so normal, so average Josephine, after all. And now my little me cowers and cringes in the recesses of my mind, waiting for the inevitable pin drop silence that we all expect when we make a vocal blunder. She whispers as I speak, "They all hear it. They are all looking at you. They are pointing their perfectly manicured fingers at you, and are laughing their crystalline laughs at your expense." Of course we all know that when we feel insecure even the most hideous of beings with teeth missing, foul breath of rotting eggs, hair greasy and unkempt, and fungus under the nails is perfect compared to our single horrible self. My particular speech impediment is not the tripping, stopping, starting, skipping impediment of the stutterer. It is not the childish, effeminate, softness of the lisper. It is not rhotacism, also called Elmer Fudd syndrome, where "rascally rabbit" becomes "wascally wabbit". Sometimes I do stammer. This is an actual speech impediment in which the speaker may have difficulty in beginning words or sentences and may be unable to express sounds, but this not the impediment that vexes me. My problem showed up when I left my country and had to learn a different language and I had to be able to roll my Rs. Lo, I cannot. When I speak Italian, instead of the beautiful trilling of the R coming from me, I hear instead the thick tongued thump as my mouth struggles to imitate the sound. It is sad. It used to be embarassing. Now, I ignore my little me and get on with it. The Italians don't really seem to mind at all.

My former father in law is Cuban and those Cubans roll their Rs too. He taught me this Cuban tongue twister to help me practice.

R con R cigarro,
R con R barril,
rápido corren los carros
cargados de azúcar al ferrocarril.

I tried it. And I decided I much prefer to listen to him say it. It sounds much better that way.