{"id":44106,"date":"2020-08-22T16:35:43","date_gmt":"2020-08-22T16:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=44106"},"modified":"2020-08-22T16:35:43","modified_gmt":"2020-08-22T16:35:43","slug":"watched-this-boy-with-empathy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=44106","title":{"rendered":"Watched this boy with empathy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I couldn’t help but feel my heart pounding hard as I watched a 13-year-old boy tell the world about the kindness extended to him by Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

Brayden Harrington has a stuttering issue he must confront every day. He delivered his remarks with supreme courage during the virtual Democratic Party Convention this week. He got most of his remarks out without a hitch. Not all of it, though.<\/p>\n

Biden overcame a stuttering issue as he was coming of age. He would read poetry, forming words carefully to avoid getting caught up in a stutter. I admire his courage, too, in fighting through the debilitating impediment. I also will pray for the future progress of young Brayden as he makes his way through life.<\/p>\n

I also would tell him, if given the chance, that he must prepare himself for more of the mistreatment I am certain he has endured already from his peers. I won’t call them his “friends,”<\/em> because real friends wouldn’t subject him to the bullying and humiliation he likely will experience … and has experienced already.<\/p>\n

I know how it goes. I felt it, too. I once had a serious stuttering problem. I cannot say it is totally eradicated. Words still trip me up on rare occasions. As a teenager — indeed, well into my high school years — I struggled with speaking, particularly in front of large groups of people.<\/p>\n

Two of my classmates in high school heard me once stumble while trying to say my own last name during a class project. They just split a gut, man! For the rest of my high school years these two fellows would mimic that moment of supreme embarrassment.<\/p>\n

Well, that was then. The here and now is quite different. I have conquered that demon … more or less. Oh, those two guys? One of them is now deceased. I saw the other one at my 50-year high school reunion in 2017. We chatted amicably as if nothing ever happened during the bad old days. I hope he reads this blog and recognizes himself in it.<\/p>\n

Hey, I don’t hold any hard feelings toward him now. I damn sure did back then.<\/p>\n

So, I salute young Brayden Harrington for standing before the entire world and speaking out on behalf of a politician who knows the battle he is enduring.<\/p>\n

Could I ever do such a thing when I was 13 years of age?<\/p>\n

Not on your life!<\/p>\n\n

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I couldn’t help but feel my heart pounding hard as I watched a 13-year-old boy tell the world about the kindness extended to him by Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden. Brayden Harrington has a stuttering issue he must confront every day. He delivered his remarks with supreme courage during the virtual Democratic Party Convention … Continue reading Watched this boy with empathy<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1406,2505,9107],"class_list":["post-44106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-dnc","tag-joe-biden","tag-stuttering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44106"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44109,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44106\/revisions\/44109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}