In this article I am going to write about an amazing incident which occured during one of the speech courses which I run in Birmingham. My name is Steve Hill and I have been running five-day courses to help people to overcome a stutter for the last ten years. A few years ago a client attended the course who was to lets say shock me in a big way, I have now knicknamed him, the stuttering thief.
I originally held the courses from my home in Brixham, Devon. I had moved to Devon from my native Birmingham when I was around twenty-three years of age. As Devon is on the south-west coast of England and is basically too far for a lot of people to travel, I would hold one course per month in Birmingham, in my sisters flat. Birmingham for any reader who is unaware of its location is situated in the heart of England and is therefore accessible to the whole country.
On this particular week I had a very nice client and we were getting on very well. His speech fluency was improving all the time as the course progressed and he had a good attitude. On the fourth day he started to really open up as his confidence was starting to increase. For a reason I still can not really understand he then started to describe one of his hobbies to me which was shoplifting! Now come on if you had a hobby of shoplifting would you tell anyone? I was not sure what to say but tried not to react in any abnormal way.
On the fifth day, the course was nearing its end when I decided to have a short break. After making my client a drink, I went to the toilet. I had left my pen and pad on the coffee table but on my return could only see the pad. I searched for a short while but could not find the pen anywhere. I have to say that the thought had crossed my mind that perhaps this person had taken it.
Whilst looking, I accidently on purpose knocked his jacket off his chair and guess what happened, my pen flew out of one its pockets. I could not believe it and all he could say was, how did that get in there. I was left wondering what else he had taken from my sisters flat! To this day I am still not sure of the answer.
