原文：Her Name Was Mrs. Claussen - And She Cared            by Dr. Lee Reeves

　　As I walked down to the counselor's office, I thought to myself, "What will she be like" Will she be old or young? Pretty or ugly? Will she care?" Oh well, I figured it didn't really matter, anyway. I'd had so many speech therapists over the years I'd lost count. Another school, another therapist. I wondered why I even bothered to go. My stuttering seemed to be just as much of a problem now as it always was, and besides I hated to miss P.E. How did they find out that I stutter anyway? The last school must have sent my records. It was pretty hard to hide the way I talked. As I walked down the hallway, memories popped in my head of how painful being a kid who stutters had been. Memories of how the kids used to call me "Motor Mouth," and of the teacher who asked me if I had "lock-jaw." It still hurt.

　　The pain welled up inside as I rounded the last corner toward the office. "Don't start getting weak knees now," I whispered to myself. I wondered why I didn't stutter when I whispered, or when I talked to myself. At any rate I was sixteen years old and a junior in high school - time to gut up. Time to meet the new one!

　　"Hello! I'm Mrs. Claussen. I hear you're from Texas!" She must have thought I was a little off my rocker as I stood there gawking, with my mouth wide open and my face red as a beet. She was really pretty! And she was young, too!

　　"Ye-Ye-Ye-Yes m-m-m-m-m-m-m-aam I am," I fumbled out. My heart felt like it was pounding through my chest, my palms were dripping wet, and I was tense all over. I really blew that introduction, and figured she probably thought I was a goof ball. "Well," she said with a kind smile, "I've always liked Texas."

　　Mrs. Claussen turned out to be one of the best speech therapists I've ever had. Not like the one in San Antonio who told me to tap my toe so I could talk to a rhythm. That was the beginning of the longest list of circus antics anyone has ever seen. That toe tap developed into a foot stomp, a hand pound, a squinted eye, a head jerk and various other "helpers."

　　Mrs. Claussen was different though. She spent the first several weeks just talking to me - asking me all kinds of questions about myself - about feelings - about what I thought I did when I blocked. And she listened. She began to teach me about the fundamentals of speech. Not just about my speech, but about everybody's. Mrs. Claussen taught me about technical things, like circumlocution (a fancy term for avoiding words). And she listened.

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