After a few weeks of speech therapy, I had enough and stopped going. A few weeks passed before my speech teacher found me in my classroom. Visibly upset, she wanted to know why I stopped attending. After a handful of excuses, I told her I felt dumb trekking it down to speech class each week to over-enunciate the words "lemonade" and "lettuce". My only recollection of her during that conversation was that she seemed visibly upset and nearly out of breath. She contacted my parents and, in order for me to get out of these speech therapy lessons, they had to sign numerous documents. My dad questioned why I was so opposed to it, and I just begged him to sign the papers and make the weekly Word Bingo games disappear. Ultimately, I finally elevated my social status to "cool" during the fifth grade and going to speech therapy classes didn't make me feel popular...not to mention, I didn't think I had a speech issue.
Fast-forward to my first paid radio gig: I was a board operator who played public affairs shows and five hours of recorded programming at WPNT-FM in Chicago. My shift began at 6 A.M. and went until 1 P.M. Between two of the early-morning shows, my boss permitted me to do an on-air weather report which was the highlight of my shift. Somewhere in the radio broadcasting Hall of Fame is my first weather report from 6:29 A.M. on June 9, 1996. While a cutesy weather jingle played, I started my report by saying, "Light lane this morning...". You can almost hear my 5th grade speech therapy teacher laughing...