Sound Seekers by Fateema Sayani is published weekly at OttawaMagazine.com. Read Fateema Sayani’s culture column inOttawa Magazine and follow her on Twitter @fateemasayani
And My N-N-N-Name Is… Peter Joynt stutters — and people reply in kind — or in jest
MC Peter Joynt — you likely know him from his love-letter rap to Ottawa — has a stutter and says he was teased about it as a kid, but not in a really bad way. “I was a pretty big kid, so it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. Only the brave would really bully me when I was younger,” the 34-year-old recalls.
Now that he’s all grown up, he still gets teased about his stutter — in ways that are perhaps not openly menacing, but come off as obtuse all the same.
“Whenever I meet someone for the first time, I’m bound to stutter on my name,” he says. “You can imagine being at a party where you have to introduce yourself. I go ahead and stutter over my name. The most common response I receive is, ‘Are you sure?’ A lot of times, people will also repeat their name back and stutter through it.”
Really? Seriously? Yes. Yes, they do.