Fixer Upper

 

It’s often difficult to understand what Heather says, even if you’ve been listening to her speak all her life. She has multiple speech disorders operating simultaneously. One of them is that words often jump out of her mouth backwards, even though she has no trouble spelling them frontwards. It’s sort of like a oral version of anagrams. In the winter, she’ll often ask us to help her build a “noseman.” She ALWAYS says the word “snowman” that way, even though the word “snow” on its own is never reversed. When we picnicked in our backyard this past summer, she worried that a “swap” might try to buzz her plate. So, we hung “swap traps” in our big walnut tree. Last Friday, as I was making out our weekly menu and shopping list, she asked if we might have “teamloaf.” I agreed, and so we’re having teamloaf for dinner tonight, with carrots and mashed topatoes.