Dear Vince Vawter,

For a couple years now, my school has considered me an IEP student, because I have a mild autism, and I stutter. I can communicate properly, I have friends that I hang out with, I have hobbies, I can function: the only problem is that my school doesn't know that, so they treat me like I can’t do anything, and give me unnecessary classes, and before school lessons to try to teach me to communicate so that I can be “normal”. Last year I was in the school library and I eyed a copy of your book Paperboy, and I found myself picking it up and reading the inside cover. At first I thought it would be a boring book about some old-timey kid (no offense), but then I read the detail about the part where the kid stuttered, and I instantly felt a connection between the protagonist and I, so I checked it out and I read it, and that was quite the adventure.

To be honest, when I first started reading your book, I wasn’t really sure what to expect, I was thinking that the whole book was going to be one big, fat pity-party for this kid, or that maybe you were going to make this kid a stereotypical dumb kid with a disability, but that wasn't what I got. What I got were lessons on the harsh realities of racism, ways to deal with people who treat me differently, and how to speak up, even when things get rough, and those are some seriously important lessons for someone like me (except for the racism bit, I don’t indulge in that).

Everyday I get asked questions about the way I talk, questions that I get asked way too much, questions I don’t know the answers to, questions like “Why do you talk like that?” or “Do you get help for it?” and my personal ‘favorite’ “That’s weird...are you faking it?” One time a boy accused me of faking my stuttering, and started telling others that I was faking it. Sometimes I wonder if people ever thought that the boy in your book was faking it or that YOU were faking it, and how many other people in the world get criticized for the natural way that they talk.

As I got older, I noticed how people started to notice my “little issue” even more than they had before, and that always made me feel self-conscious, especially when doing speeches, and engaging in “small talk” (that’s the worst). While I read your book, it was comforting to know that there was indeed someone like me who could share my struggle, even if was just a fictional character from 1959, but then I read the “About the Author” section I was so thrilled at the concept of a real live person who shared the same problem as me. After I read the book, I heard that you wrote a paper called “Notes from a Stuttering ‘Expert”, and I was so excited I just HAD to read it, and while I was reading it I noticed that it was for two people, the stutters, and the people who know them. It was really nice to hear some great advice that no speech therapist could give, you told me to not pity myself, and to take the advice of my speech therapist, and to actually let my voice be heard, you even gave me some advice as what I SHOULDN'T do as a stutterer, and how you learned from experience, “Don't be like the boy who would hold a thumbtack in his hand and press it into his palm anytime he would have to recite in class. Who was that boy? Take a guess.”.  Although I liked those other parts, my favorite part was at the end you showed pride (the good kind) fearlessness, and made reference to some of your past life by telling the audience “I wear my scars proudly. Go ahead. Stick a pin in me.” It was very eye-opening.

It takes a special kind of person to write something that just digs deep down into your mind and settles down and stays there, like a rock on the ocean floor. I’m only 14 and I don’t know all of the answers to all of my specific life questions, and it’s hard to get those answers because only a select few can answer them- and you are definitely one of those people. In your book you channeled so much knowledge into just 200 or so pages it was difficult to wrap my head around. You taught me lessons about things I never knew I even needed, lessons about how to live life to the fullest, even with a speech impediment. So the next time someone makes fun of the way I talk, I’ll tell them “I wear my scars proudly. Go ahead. Stick a pin in me.”