Teen Fiction: Pen Pals

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Dear Diary

It’s funny how life works. My mother a social worker whose job it is to solve people’s problems can’t even solve her own daughter’s problem. I hate it. I hate hate my stutter. I mean it’s not like we didn’t try. I only went to 11 different professionals throughout my life. But it looks like my stutter is here to stay at least for now. Presenting Tova Bandman prisoner of her mouth.

But my mother actually did give me a good idea which was a life saver. You see the stutter thing kind of ate up at my self-confidence so I don’t have that many friends at school. I hang around a couple of kids who aren’t really my type but the super normal kids like Rochel Weiss and Dina Kamanetzky stick with girls who can actually get a string of sentences out within a span of less than a minute. So here’s where pen and paper come in.

A pen doesn’t stutter. Which is why I do have one very real pen-pal friend my mother introduced to me through some kind of teen project. When I write to my pen pal Shana Greenspan I feel like a bird whose shackles were lifted off her wings. I can write and write about how I really feel without a care in the world. And Shana is so normal. But here is where my conscience really gets to me. Shana doesn’t know about my stutter. I sound so normal on paper I almost feel like I’m cheating. I guess it’s just one of those guilt trips I’ll always have. Three cheers for Tova world’s presiding queen of guilt.

Dear Diary

So this is news. Real news. I’m going to meet Shana Greenspan my pen pal and best friend for the first time ever. She just emailed that she’s coming from Los Angeles to New York in two days so of course we’re going to make up a time and place to see each other for the very first time. I mean I sort of know what she looks like because she sent me a selfie of herself in a letter but meeting in person is different. But I’m literally biting my nails. How is she going to react when she meets me for the first time? We’ve never even spoke on the phone so she totally has no clue about my stutter. I know it’s really silly but I almost feel like a jeweler caught selling a gold ring that isn’t genuine. But there’s no use mulling over it. I guess time will tell whether my fears have any basis.