West Virginia University - News and Information Services
Talking the talk: WVU's Tim Flynn tells the world what it's like to stutter
Grad student was profiled on MTV last year - and his faculty mentor was once a stutterer himself
Try ordering a pizza and suddenly finding yourself tripped up on the word, “pepperoni.”
Try seeking summer employment when you can’t get past the “jay” sound in “job.”
Try saying hello to someone in the hallway when it takes a half a minute to get those two syllables out.
Try being Tim Flynn for a day. Then try doing it with the humor and grace that the chronic stutterer exudes on a daily basis.
Flynn, 23, a West Virginia University graduate student in speech pathology, has stuttered for as long as he can remember – but he hasn’t let the condition relegate him to a public vow of silence.
Instead, he just shrugs and shakes his head at some of the circumstances his stutter has wrought.
And more often than not, he spins what could have been hurt feelings into a deadpan comedy routine that’s heavy on the laughs.
Like the time two summers ago back home when a routine traffic stop resulted in a call for backup and a 20-minute interrogation in a police station. He’s from Upper Marlboro, Md., near the nation’s capital, and one day he got pulled over for speeding.
The District of Columbia cop was polite enough as he asked for Flynn’s license and registration. Things got tricky, though, when he inquired as to the student’s hometown and his destination for the day.
“He asked me where I was from and for the life of me, I couldn’t get ‘Upper Marlboro’ out,” Flynn said. “Half the time when I started going to WVU people would ask me where I was from and I’d say ‘Maine.’ That worked until somebody said, ‘What part?’ and I said, ‘Uh, the upper part?’”
Here’s what happened with the flashing blue lights outside the Beltway:
“He went back to his cruiser and was on the radio a long time,” Flynn said, shaking his head at the memory.
“It wasn’t 10 minutes later when three other police cars showed up and everybody got out with their hands on their holsters. I was like, ‘What is this?’ He called for backup. I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t whacked out on drugs. I had to go down to the station because I was such a ‘threat.’”
Then there was that time at McDonald’s.
All he wanted was a fish sandwich.
He ended up with 16 Happy Meals instead.
“‘Happy Meal,’ was the only thing I could get out,” he said, rolling his eyes. “And of course, I couldn’t say ‘one,’ that day. But I could say, ‘sixteen.’ The guy said, ‘Are you sure?’ I just nodded. I ended up with a lot of cool toys, so I guess it worked out OK. And I like their French fries.”
Flynn’s faculty mentor, Ken St. Louis, a Ph.D. in WVU’s Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, laughs out loud when he hears that story – but not because he’s making fun, mind you.
It’s because he’s making note of the resilience and spirit of a student who articulates success every single day.
Besides, St. Louis knows exactly what he’s going through. He stuttered as a kid, too, and it lasted all the way up until his undergraduate years at the University of Colorado. He knocked the stutter and went in the Peace Corps to a two-year appointment in Turkey.
Where the stutter came back in a second language.
St. Louis got pretty fluent in Turkish pretty quickly – but amazingly enough, he began stuttering again in his new tongue. And just to compound the mystery of the condition, today he still only stutters in Turkish, but not English.
Over his career, St. Louis has conducted a lot of speech therapy sessions outside of his teaching and research at WVU. He appreciates that Flynn wants to take that same path, he said.
“Tim’s got all this personality and all this intelligence and empathy,” St. Louis said. “With a name like ‘Flynn,’ you know he’s an Irish storyteller from way back. People double over laughing when he goes through all his adventurers – not because he’s a stutterer, but because he is a storyteller. I couldn’t be more impressed with him. He’s going to help a lot of people by the time he’s done.”
“Dr. St. Louis is a big part of all this,” Flynn said. The two met by way of an English class essay Flynn wrote on life as a stutterer, and that particular prof knew of St Louis' work. She forwarded it to him.
“He talked me into going into speech pathology,” Flynn said.
St. Louis is a prolific writer and researcher in stuttering whose work is known internationally. Flynn happily regards him as both a mentor and a friend.
“He knows exactly what I’m going through,” Flynn said.
Last year, Flynn and two other college students who stutter from New York and Pennsylvania got the chance to show a national television audience what they go through on a daily basis.
The three were profiled on the MTV documentary series, “True Stories” for a segment entitled, “I Stutter.” Cameras followed the trio across their respective campuses and communities.
Flynn’s humor shone through.
“I’m still getting recognized from the show,” he said. “That’s kind of crazy. I just like being around people. I like to talk and tell stories. I have a sense of humor. I’m like everyone else – it just takes me a little longer to order in the drive-through.”
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