Say what you like about sausages, they don’t make life easy when you’ve got a lisp. Neither do crisps, Wispa bars, biscuits or any of the other sweet tasting sensations they sell in the shops. Oh yes, life with a lisp can be cruel.
But the cruellest thing of all is the word lisp itself. I mean, what joker came up with a word for the inability to pronounce S sounds properly and put an S in the middle of it? Samson the Sadducee Strangler? Silus the Syrian Assassin? Some silly sod, whoever it was.
It doesn’t end there either. The more you investigate the lisp phenomenon, the more you come across words like sibilance (the deliberate use of consecutive S sounds to give everyone a laugh at the expense of lispers – hilarious) and learn that a lisp is caused by the way the tongue touches the teeth. Try saying that without spraying spittle over your thesis on photosynthesis in thistles.
I’m not afraid to admit that I had a strong lisp as a child. I first became aware of it when asked to sing ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ solo in school and nearly pushed my front teeth out. After that I became so self-conscious that I avoided words with Ss in them for 10 years until, on turning 16, I plucked up the courage to whisper the word ‘sex’ to a sixth form girl from Sissinghurst and was sniggered out of the snug bar at the Swan and Sugarloaf.
I’m aware that this is becoming uncomfortably autobiographical. Stay with it.
By this stage I’d been listening intently to The Clash for several years, for ciphers to the riddles and reasons to the rhymes, and suddenly it dawned on me why I liked the band so much. Joe Strummer had a lisp! It was endearing. It was characterful. I decided to stop trying to conceal my lisp and within two weeks I’d landed myself a Spanish girlfriend. It crossed my mind that I’d spent the first 20 years of my life speaking the wrong language for my tongue.
The love affair didn’t last – Spain is a hell of a commute – but the job was done. My lispophobia was cured. OK, so people I meet for the first time still think my name is Thim (even though that’s not a real name) but at least I can pronounce chorizo properly, and when you live in Reigate that’s an asset you can’t put a price on.
So celebrate with me, fellow lispers, as we approach the start of astronomical spring, and remember to send your sympathies to the lispless.
They don’t know what they’re mithing.
