I did it for the sloth 🎧

Why add audios? I could say it’s for accessibility purposes, but I read a comment in a blogging community that basically said they already have software for screen reading.

I suppose I just like the act of reading my words. Making them feel less serious or heavy.

I think back on my third grade self. Mrs. Corchoran was my teacher, and she would tell my mother: “Chrissy looks attentive and she nods at all the things I’m saying, but when I ask her a question about what we just discussed, she can’t answer.”

Hmm.

She ended up reaching me pretty damn well.

Mrs. Corchoran made me the narrator of a big school play about the rainforst (I remember my crush at the time was a sloth), citing the reason that I had a voice that sounded like Linus from Charlie Brown. She also encouraged me, at such a young age, to attend small speaking engagements outside of school. I remember reading a book aloud under the dim lighting of Borders Bookstore (RIP).

I don’t remember whether or not I loved doing this. I just did it. I’d narrate plays and get up in front of the room with ease. Until Ms. Glavin.

I must’ve had some kind of confidence that she detested? I’m not even sure. I had written a story to share with the class for an assignment. We were asked to read the story in front of the room, and I read my first page only to be stopped mid-sentence to repeat a word I’d said. I don’t remember the word. I guess my lisp was evident. She mimicked it, and I remember that feeling of being stricken, because the class laughed. Then she asked me to repeat it again, I guess for more laughs? You would think I’d remember the word.

Anyway, I never got up and spoke publicly until I was THIRTY YEAR’S OLD, for my best friend’s wedding. It’s insane how much telling that story makes me still fill up with hot shame. As if I’m the one who should apologize or feel small in that moment? But damn, I did.

So, I guess, twenty-five years later, when I make the decision to read my writing—even in the privacy of this little room, with my little dog, first thing in the morning, with allergies sometimes evident—I feel like I’m taking back the girl Mrs. Corchoran encouraged, from the girl Ms. Glavin destroyed.

^{(Daily Writing 027)}