This was the line from an episode of the 1968 television series, “Here Come The Brides”.  I vaguely remember it from my childhood, and then, only in re-runs.  I visited a friend who is a covert stutterer. I curiously asked her about the boxed DVD set which I noticed among the rest of her collection. She told me about the show and asked if I was interested in watching the pilot episode.

My friend is an expert on the show, I kid you not. She is a member of the show’s fan club, which formed in 1999, and its yahoo group, which she joined a year later.  Later in the evening, she showed me scrapbooks, newsletters, and pictures of fan club get-together events (or GT’s as known by the fan club) held over the years.

She shared that she began watching the program as a 13-year old, and when one of the regular characters opened his mouth and stuttered, she was hooked. There were 27 episodes in the first season, and the character of Jeremy stuttered openly in every episode. He and his brothers and other characters talked about it, using the actual word “stuttering”, instead of euphemisms sometimes heard today, 40 years later. My friend proudly told me that she believed it to be the first, and maybe only, television series that aired weekly that had a regular character who stuttered openly. (The show was canceled after the second season, prompting the fan club to rally the TV people to get the first season produced on DVD).

Being a person who stutters,  I was very interested. I wanted to see how it was handled. So we watched the pilot episode on a Saturday night over some good libation. She was clearly interested in my opinion. And later admitted that she had been wanting to ask my opinion of this show.

So, I watched and waited to hear Jeremy stutter. Stutter he did and I was impressed. The stuttering was very realistic. My friend shared that the actor (teen heart-throb at the time, Bobby Sherman) had worked with a SLP to learn how to stutter. Jeremy’s character had repetitions, blocks and accompanying facial tension. Sometimes, he was made fun of by other characters and his brothers stood up for him. They were not embarrassed by their brother’s stuttering.

The part that hooked my friend, and impressed me too, was when Jeremy decided to tell a girl he really liked that he stuttered. You could tell he had mustered up his courage to tell her. He came out with it, very directly. “Candy, I stutter.”  The pretty girl just looked at Jeremy and said, “Oh, I bite my nails” and held out her fingers for him to look at her bitten nails.

It was priceless! Perfect! Here this kid was petrified to tell a girl he adored that he stutters, thinking that she would think it so awful that she would want nothing to do with him. Instead, she thought it no bigger a deal than biting your nails.

This was forty years ago! I never would have guessed that stuttering would have been talked about so openly on a regular weekly television series. And treated as if it was no big deal.

Wow, imagine if we had that mindset today. Imagine if there was a weekly television series today that featured a regular ordinary character who stutters. Not one who is made to look ignorant, or is faking it, or only shows up for five minutes for comedic effect.

What do you think? Isn’t that a great response to someone telling you he stutters? I give much kudos to the folks who were involved with that series. We can all learn from that “its no big deal attitude”. I certainly did!