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I had a lot of trouble speaking as a kid. I didn't really speak in coherent sentences until I was, like, 6 years old. There was a long time where everybody was very worried, because my sisters were so advanced for their age, and I would barely talk.

I had a bad stutter when I was really young. I couldn't get a sentence out. Like, 'D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-ad.' And that turned into a mumble.

I had a terrible stammering problem when I was young, and as a result I spent a lot of time alone.

Gosh, I couldn't even talk right until I was about 6 years old or something like that.

And then, when I started to school, I found out I couldn't talk.

When I was born I was so surprised I didn't talk for a year and a half.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

But I stuttered as a kid. I went to classes to help it, and it just went away around fourth grade, when I became more aware of how others spoke, I think. But also, growing up in the South, a mumble is a way of speaking.

As soon as I could talk, I was bellowing at the top of my lungs. My parents couldn't get over how weird I sounded - like an old man when I was just a toddler! But no one was gonna shut me up.

As a child in the early 1980s, I tended to talk with things in my mouth - food, dentist's tubes, balloons that would fly away, whatever - and if no one else was around, I'd talk anyway.