The popcorn reading was the worst for Michael Pittman Jr. That’s when the students in his grade-school class would read a page or a couple of paragraphs from a schoolbook and then hand the reading responsibilities off to another student.

Often, that student was Pittman Jr., and it was him for a very troubling reason: He suffered from a debilitating stutter, and his young classmates derived great amusement from listening to Pittman struggle to form the words that were rolling around in his brain.

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Sometimes the words would come slowly, very slowly, after several detours, and sometimes they wouldn’t come at all; Pittman would get stuck, often when he was using the word “I,” which turned into “I-I-I-I-I,” and went no further. He would slow down, try every little trick he learned in therapy, and sometimes … nothing. Just some repetitive sounds that went nowhere.

Pittman, now a rookie receiver for the Colts who had the National Stuttering Association etched on his cleats for the “My Cleats, My Cause” weekend last Sunday, lived in mortal fear of popcorn reading.

“I would try to avoid it at all costs,” Pittman said. “I’d do anything to get out of reading in front of the whole class. But they kept picking me. I’d do everything to not get picked, but they kept picking me.

“Kids are kids and I don’t blame any of them for what they said back then. It was hurtful, for sure. I’m young and people are like ‘b-b-b-b-b’ or `ah-ah-ah-ah’; they’re doing it in my face and there was really nothing I could do. It was so frustrating. It made me feel like people looked at me like I was dumb or unintelligent, that I was different.”

It was mortifying. Pittman Jr. would try to spit the words out, but his mind, it seemed to him, was working faster than his mouth. Certain words would get caught in his throat. And his classmates snickered and laughed.

“Honestly, people still tease him to this day,” said his mother Kristin Randall. “People say mean things. We’ve been in public where kids will say ‘What’s wrong with him?’ and I want to bite their heads off. I’ve always been afraid of people making fun of him. You spend your whole life trying to protect him. But he does well at ignoring them.”

Every day at a prescribed time, his teacher would get a phone call from the school’s front office to inform her that it was time for Pittman Jr. to leave class and head to speech therapy.

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“As soon as the phone started ringing, I knew,” Pittman Jr. said. “Then she’d call me out and I’d have to pick up all of my stuff and leave. And then later, I had to come back, so I had eyes on me leaving and then coming back, so that just added more pressure to it. I’d rather we’d done it after school. It’s not like something I was trying to hide, but still, I hated it every time.

“I loved the therapy, it was so helpful, it was fun. But getting called out like that every class, that was tough. It makes people think there’s something wrong with you.”

As a very young child, Pittman Jr. rarely talked, not around his family, not around strangers, not at all. He would try to say something, hit a verbal iceberg and then simply point. By the time he turned 5, the Pittmans, who were still married at the time, realized they needed to get their athletic son some help.

“At first, we thought it was cute and that he’d grow out of it,” Randall said. “We didn’t pay that close of attention to it except for making sure others didn’t make fun of it. We finally had him assessed in the first grade and that’s when he began getting speech services.”

Added his father Michael Sr., a former NFL football player with the Cardinals, Buccaneers and Broncos from 1998-2008: “Sometimes Michael would come home from school and you could see the frustration in his face. Let’s face it: Kids can be mean. I just remember times he’d come home from school and he’d be like ‘D-D-D-D-D-D-a-d’ and I’d say, ‘Son, take your time.’ Or he’d call out to his brother Micah and it would be ‘M-M-M-M-M’ and he’d get so frustrated with himself.

“Even now, he’s super smart, but some people get on the internet and say such disrespectful things. He’s a great son. He just got married. He’s an all-around great person, so when someone says something negative about his stutter, it hurts. Even though he’s a grown man (age 23), I still want to protect him.”

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After his parents divorced, Pittman Jr. found himself being treated very differently at his mom’s house and his dad’s house. His mom, along with his grandmother, provided maternal succor, patiently working with him as he struggled to form the words. At his dad’s house, Michael Sr. and Michael’s siblings were more inclined to give him good-natured grief – “tough love” you could say – and to this day, Michael Jr. still believes their ribbing toughened him up to deal with the real world.

Still, though, there was popcorn reading to be conquered, speech-therapy classes to attend and a long, hard road before Michael Jr. could engage in a satisfactory conversation without tripping on his own words.

Only 1 percent of Americans suffer from stuttering and most outgrow it over time, but the issue has gained momentum from the fact that President-Elect Joe Biden dealt with a stutter his entire life. Now it’s come into the mainstream of the American consciousness, and Pittman Jr. is a growing part of that.

The National Stuttering Association had no idea Pittman Jr. was going to mention the organization during his “My Cause, My Cleats” weekend in the NFL until they were tagged in his Instagram post.

Shout out again to Michael Pittman Jr. of the Indianapolis Colts and Brandon Shell of the Seattle Seahawks for choosing to support the NSA for the #MyCauseMyCleats campaign. Looking forward to both of this weekend's games! 🥳

— NSA (@westutter) December 5, 2020

“To say that was exciting is an understatement,” said Kristine Short, a chair on the board of directors for the National Stuttering Association. “Just indescribable. What it says is here’s a successful athlete who is at the pinnacle of his career and he’s not afraid or embarrassed to tell the whole nation that he stutters.

“It gives these kids a chance and to say, ‘Hey did you see the game and see his shoes? Did you see he stutters?’ It reminds them that their ability is not tied to the fact they stutter, that they can go out there and achieve and that they’re proud of it. And it’s so exciting for the parents, too, to see someone embrace it in a public way. It gets into the public consciousness that it’s OK to stutter.”

Most studies on stuttering suggest the disability – and it is termed a disability by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) – is a neurological and genetic issue.

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In almost every way, the Pittmans did precisely the right things to help their son: At an early age, they sought treatment for Michael, both private and through his school. Still, he struggled, both with his speech and with his sense of self-worth.

“My best advice for parents is to help the child become an effective communicator whether they stutter or not, to focus on the words that they’re saying and now how they’re saying the word,” Short said. “… It can take a toll on a child. Parents play a crucial role in advocating on a child’s behalf and sometimes they don’t know what to do. Most people have never met anyone who stutters and so while the teacher may have great intentions and really, truly wants to help every student, unless the parents educate people on what stuttering is, the teacher may not realize that popcorn reading can have a detrimental effect on a child who stutters.

“It’s important to have all the information you can get, whether that’s through the National Stuttering Association or someone else. But it’s important to set up an appointment with a teacher, download the free brochures online and tell (the teacher), ‘Here’s what you’re going to hear from my child.’ You’re going to hear repetitions, pauses, blocks; every child stutters differently. And come up with different ways the teacher can help with that.”

The key is making a child, or even a teenager, comfortable in their own skin, and that’s no small feat. Kids being kids, they’re going to seize upon any perceived weakness or difference and pick at it like a scab.

“It can take a psychological toll,” Short said. “It’s certainly something you want to mitigate. The best advice I received as a parent from a speech pathologist was to find other peers who stutter. It’s an amazing experience for a kid just to meet someone else who stutters because you understand there are others out there who stutter. Until you meet them, you can feel very alone.

“Knowing other kids your age who stutter, or players you admire like Michael, that makes it so much better. It provides an opportunity to be free to be yourself without having to talk about stuttering. That kind of support can be life-changing. And for parents as well, talking to other parents whose children stutter, it’s such a big thing. There are countless cases of stutterers who are athletes, scholars, go to excellent colleges, become everything they want to be. When you see that, you feel like it’s not only your child and your child feels like it’s not only him. When they stop being embarrassed about speaking differently, then they become more comfortable in their own skin.”

It’s about erasing the stigma that comes with stuttering.

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Pittman Jr., who’s been very public about a private issue for a very long time, is helping make that happen.

Pittman Jr. doesn’t remember it clearly, but his mother does: One of the tools the therapist gave Michael and his mom was a popsicle stick with a toy stuffed turtle attached to it.

“It stood for slow and steady speech,” Randall said “So instead of me interrupting him, I’d hold up the turtle-on-a-stick and he’d slow down and take a breath so I’m not interrupting his thoughts. The main key was not to interrupt him, to remind him to slow down and breathe.”

In fifth grade, he had something of a breakthrough. The teacher asked the students to give a speech about themselves, about their likes and dislikes, their personal history, and Pittman Jr., the same young man who used to grunt and point as a way of communicating, incredibly and surprisingly said, “OK.”

“We practiced it and practiced it,” Randall said. “When he’d get stuck on a word, we’d just take it out. He talked about things that came naturally. He talked about football, favorite food, how much his mom loves to clean – I don’t – and it was a funny speech and he gave it with no problems.

“I think I was more scared for him than he was for himself. You spend your whole life protecting your kids. I was always there in school, the lunch mom, the art mom, the room mom. I didn’t want him to be made fun of. But that speech he gave was a real turning point.”

Pittman Jr. doesn’t specifically remember that speech, but with therapy at school and at home, and with age, he slowly emerged from his shell. There are still words that give him trouble – they are audible still today – but he has worked his way through it and around it.

Slowly, there was an improvement, largely because he was forced to face his fears. In high school, he was a football player of great merit, so that meant occasional interviews with the local media. Then, when he got to USC and became one of the top wide receivers in the country, he again had to face down his fear of public speaking by talking to the media. It wasn’t fun, mind you; it was mortifying at times, but he did it, and over time, his speech improved.

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Ironically, he finds reading enormously helpful with his stutter. He’ll read anything, whether it’s a book or a road sign. The more he reads, the more fluent he gets.

“He’s come a really long way,” Pittman Sr. said. “You can see it in the way he acts. He’s always been super athletic but he wasn’t that comfortable in his own skin. But now he’s a totally different young man.

“I remember, in his sophomore year, he wanted to be a captain at USC. I told him, ‘You know, you’re going to have to be a vocal example, give motivational speeches, things like that,’ and he said, ‘Fine,’ and that made me so proud of the man he’d become. He just kept gaining confidence in himself. ‘This is who I am, there’s nothing wrong with me and I’m gonna do the best I can.’ Then, his senior year, he became a captain.“

Pittman Jr. would go on to become one of the best receivers in USC history and was drafted by the receiver-needy Colts in the second round of this year’s NFL Draft. He started slowly – the lack of off-season training and preseason games put him, and most rookies, behind – and an injury slowed his progress. But in the last five games, he’s caught 21 passes for 297 yards and a touchdown.

“He’s an explosive playmaker,” offensive coordinator Nick Sirianni said. “So what does that do? It takes away some heat from T.Y. (Hilton) and you’ve seen what’s happened with him the past few weeks since Michael’s developed. (Receivers) coach (Mike Groh) has done a great job of helping develop Michael, and Michael has done a great job of working and getting better.

“Having him come along is just a huge asset to our offense. What else does it do? It takes a guy out of the box to play the pass and it opens things up for the run game. So him coming along, developing and doing what he has done the last couple of weeks has really helped our offense continue to succeed.”

My favorite story of the night so far is Michael Pittman Jr.’s battle with a stutter. He doesn’t use it as a setback and I admire that.

From a fellow stutterer, keep on pushing at the next level. 💪🏻

— Brandon Sudge (@brandonsudge) April 24, 2020

His play has been speaking loudly and clearly in recent weeks, and now, after years of therapy and hard work, he’s communicating fluently.

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“It (the stuttering) never gets completely better, but he’s learned how to control it,” Randall said. “He knows to try to avoid certain words, like words that start with ‘N.’ And he can feel when he’s going to get stuck, so he stops and he recognizes and he breathes and move on. You can see it when he does interviews now, I’m just amazed at how far he’s come.

“I remember the first interview he did (in college), we found it on YouTube and we went back and reviewed it. Like, ‘OK, this was good, let’s maybe not use this word.’ I find he uses ‘like’ now as a buffer word; he tries not to use it, but the more he thinks about not saying it, the more he uses it. His speech barrier isn’t so bad anymore, but he’s in the limelight now, so they see it more. But he’ll call to talk about interviews or speeches he’s got to give, and we’ll talk on the phone and go over it.”

Today, he is doing a phone interview with The Athletic Indiana, and honestly, if you didn’t know beforehand that he had a stutter, it would be barely perceptible. There are some moments when you hear it or you hear him speaking slow – the turtle on the stick – elongating those words so that they come out fluently. But to go from a schoolboy who mostly communicated by pointing at things to a professional athlete who handles his media opportunities with elan, that’s impressive.

“When (the Colts director of football communications) asked me to talk to you, my immediate reaction was no, I’d rather not,” Pittman Jr. said. “But then I’m like, ‘OK, Michael, let’s just do it and it’s going to be OK.’ I had to build myself up. There’s no getting around the fact that I’m an NFL player now and have to do interviews.”

This one went exceedingly well. There were some small hiccups along the way, but he no longer lives in mortal fear of opening his mouth and communicating as he sees fit. The dread he used to feel during popcorn reading is gone.

(Top photo of Pittman Jr.: Zach Bolinger / Icon Sportswire via Associated Press)