I’m never sure if it’s safe to speak.

Normally, I’d just say what was on my mind, using complete sentences to the best of my ability, but over the course of my life I’ve found that first, there’s a big difference between composing on paper or a typewriter, in which case you can spend hours thinking over your work and also have the ability to edit a complete essay before you send it, and regular face to face communication.

Conversational speech isn’t scripted, and you have to develop a sensitivity so you’ll know who you can trust, who you shouldn’t trust, who’s able to converse with you on your important topic, and when you’re just going to be stuck looking for a specialist.

When you need to talk to someone else who’s an expert or deeply interested in what you’re thinking about, there’s a point spread on the mat again, because maybe you need to pay someone….lawyers are like that for example. If you need financial help, maybe you have creditworthiness, and maybe you don’t…maybe it’s just a general newspaper finance page level interest in the economy. Should you stop with reading library books? Do you really need to take bookkeeping online or in school? Would that even help?

Maybe it’s a very serious focus for you on politics or religion. Neither of those is always appropriate, and viewpoints vary quite widely. With religion it’s almost dangerous, you don’t know what their Bible commentary says, anymore than you can see their celestial or abysmal future. And clearly, most politics is rioting and assaulting the federal building.

I stutter all the time. I have a social habit, which is very, very strong and longstanding, of opening potential dialogue with people I don’t already know by uttering half of a thought, and watching them to see if they’re in the mood to talk, and whether or not it seems that they know what the second half of the sentence might be, and whether they seem to look like they agree, are even interested, or (oh no!) think it appears that I’m “playing a guessing game against them). I always stutter.