HELEN KELLER WAS ONE HELL OF A CONTENDER
PART II

The first word I ever said was "no."

Heh, it's kind of humorous if you think of the type of personality I have, and especially how I was as a child. I was rock hard stubburn, and even to this day I am. Once I make a decision for myself, it's final, there's no swaying it or trying to compromise. I can definantly testify that I'm stubborn to a fault. In fact, that's probably one of my worst traits, but, then again, probably one of my best, considering I always stick to my word.

Though I did have a bit of a southern accent off and on throughout my childhood (the reason being I moved around a lot), I've always had good grammer and well-developed speech. This, however, I cannot say for my twin brother, who had troubles with his Rs and Ls until he got out of grade school. For example, his form of racecar would come out as "wacecaw," or if he said talk to me, it would be "tawk to me." I often wonder how that happens with kids, as in, why I talked right and he didn't, so I suppose I'll maybe, at some point, look it up and find out. But not now.

Talking is the thing that makes us, us. How different would we be from any other animals if we did not have the gift of language? Not only would it be extremely difficult within daily communication, but there would be no books, no interenet, and not much of anything else outside of just surviving.

However, though it is a hell of an amazing gift and blessing we humans have been granted, couldn't it also be considered a curse? Countless times we've been known to stick our foot in our mouths, slander someones reputation or name (which could get someone killed, or even US killed), and caused a numerous amount of disappointment, sorrow, guilt, dispare, and just terrible feelings to well-up inside of the listenner. This is not to say that everything that slips off of our lips is crude and corrupt, but how is it that we can go into the gallows of Hell and back with words, yet we cannot describe many of the wonderful things that happen? Why is that? We can go into endless discription about terrible happennings, yet with amazing experiences, we have nothing to say for them. Why is it not the other way around? Sometimes, at lengths, words have gone far enough to make someone want to end there own life. I guarentee the amount of heartbreak songs as oppose to love songs overrides the latter twice as much.

I know, it may seem trivial and quite stoic to speak under these terms, but are they not true? Even now, as I write these symbols onto the world wide web, my thoughts are trite and filled with only despair. Yet another example of how there are so many ways to describe how ugly bad times can be, and only a handful of ways to describe the good. However, I am still open-minded enough to believe that maybe there is a better perception of this. There must be, but I just wish someone could point it out to the rest of us. Yet, in most accounts, hope is often left in vain.

Yet speech is not only a gift (or curse, if your glass is half empty), but it is also an art. It takes us years to conspire a detailed though, let alone begin to formulate correct sentence structures. This is especially hard in English and French, where there are many irregular forms of words. I've always performed excellently in English, but I never realized how gifted I was until I was in the 7th grade, when I received a perfect score on the state-wide persuasive essay. Not only that, but (even though I was not the BEST person in 7th grade, and in trouble all the time) my English teacher, Mr. Brandon, told my mother and the other teachers I was the smartest and most well-written 7th grade student he'd ever seen. Mind you, he'd sent me out in the hall on countless occations due to my lack of respect and swelling attitude, yet he still said these things about me.

Articulation is a wonderful thing. Not only is it easier to express yourself and communicate affectively, but having wide range of vocabulary comes as second nature, and it's easier to read complex writing, such as Beowulf or Shakespeare. Though, some are discriminated because they are not articulate enough. I'm not sure how to relate to this, because I myself have never been in that position, though my brother will barely pick up the classifieds. However, I do know that, just because someone uses simple words, does NOT mean that they are stupid, and in no way puts them on a lower scale than anyone else.

Right now, I don't even know what the hell I'm trying to get at, which is also a fault. Even though we have thousands of pages worth of words in the dictionary, still yet it is sometimes hard to comprehend what others are trying to interpret, let alone ourselves.