Anything Can Be an Advantage...
Absolutely anything can be an advantage. I grew up on Vashon Island Washington, in Puget Sound between Seattle and Tacoma. During eighth grade at McMurray Intermediate School, we were visited by an absolutely spell-binding guest speaker.
This gentleman was about fifty and held the entire seventh and eighth grade student body in full thrall for over an hour. He was the most charismatic and amazing speaker I have ever run across in my life. He had developed throat cancer some years before and had to have his larynx removed surgically. As a result he breathed through a little tracheotomy hole in his throat and no longer had vocal chords. Like most people with this problem, he was able to use a little mechanical buzzer as an artificial voice box. Unlike most people with this problem, he learned how to speak without using his mechanical buzzer, by learning to swallow air and belch it back out again. He used these long belches as an artificial voice. This man spoke to us at length by continuously burping.
I remember him as if it were yesterday. Of course, I have no idea what he was talking about. Presumably it was a chat on the evils of smoking and throat cancer, although it could have easily been a speech against baseball's infield-fly rule, or against the evils of durable powers of attorney. The point is that he burped the whole hour-long speech to us in a student-body assembly in full view of the teachers and administration, and retained the respect of the grown-ups.
To say that he was popular with the seventh and eighth graders would be the height of understatement. If he had been ambitious and politically savvy, he could have called for an election and been unanimously declared to be student body president on the spot. With a little prompting, we would have probably been willing to start some kind of religion around this talent of his. By burping instructions to us, he could have easily had us standing around malls and airports raising donations from passers by. It was just that cool.
Looking at it from his perspective, he was probably a little nervous. Trying to make a speech to a large and unruly crowd of middle schoolers without the benefit of a voice box probably seemed like a tall order. Little did he know the impact he would have. Speakers come and go, but a man who can belch out a long talk for an hour is a force to be reckoned with, as far as middle schoolers are concerned.
I will remember him until the day I die, and I have never smoked in my life. I am also vaguely uncomfortable with the infield fly rule and durable powers of attorney.