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5/20/2026 0 Comments My DreamsI have been thinking about my dreams lately. I am not sure it’s possible to achieve any of them. I want to get my high school diploma and go to college. I want to become an educated man. I am not receiving an education in too many areas. How can this be rectified if schools won’t help? How can any of us achieve our dreams when no one is trying to help us and our parents? I have to hope something huge happens in the world to change the current paradigm. 
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5/8/2026 1 Comment My Starring MomentOn Wednesday, I was a presenter at a gala for Beautiful People. It’s a charity for adaptive sports. They had me and Mom on stage, and Mom read my poem, The Path of Hope. It was a huge moment for me. There were over three hundred people there. I got a standing ovation, and felt incredibly proud.    My name is Vinny Bertrani, and I am almost 13. I was 9 when my Mom brought me to Mouth to Hand to learn how to type for communication. It was incredibly difficult for me at first because I had kind of checked out. School was so awful and boring that I really didn’t engage with the world. To put it bluntly, I was in la la land. Before I could learn to spell, I had to learn to stay in my cognitive brain where I could actually think. My teachers here at Mouth to Hand dragged me out of the fog, and once I could talk, they began to educate me. I love to learn. My Mom tried to get my school to take me out of the most restrictive environment but they wouldn’t so now I am home-schooled. I know people have a really hard time seeing who we are inside these bodies. I am very intelligent, but people don’t think so because my mouth says stupid stuff. I have zero control over my mouth. That’s the thing people don’t get: we have little - to no - control over our bodies. I can be thinking one thing and my body may do the exact opposite. I can’t tell you how upsetting that is. Anyway, since I learned how to talk by typing, my life is a billion times better. I have friends and fun. I am learning interesting stuff. I hope that the world catches up to what we already know: nonspeaking does not equal nonthinking.  3/11/2026 4 Comments One Month to Go!There is totally nothing better than the M2H gala. The fact that we are considered worth celebrating makes me emotional. Before M2H, I was only known for my mouth noise. It says really stupid stuff all the time. Everyone thought it was me talking, but it wasn’t, because I can’t control it at all. Anyway, now people know the real Vinny, and my Mom is proud of me. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. The words up on the screen during Judy’s presentation are my words - it’s not just stupid stuff an aide did for me. To walk into the gala and see all those people dressed up just for us, well…it’s awesome. It’s a month away and I’m counting the days.  Me, my Mom and my sister, Violet, at last year's gala!11/11/2025 0 Comments Friendsgiving and the CHD ConferenceOn Saturday there was a Friendsgiving party at Mouth to Hand. About fifty people came. It was awesome in every way. The food was particularly great. The whole party was for us to watch Alex, who was in Austin, Texas, at the Children’s Health Defense Conference. He was on the nonspeakers’ panel. Watching that was one of the best moments of my life for a lot of reasons. First, seeing nonspeakers sitting on stage totally regulated was very cool. Secondly, we knew that a thousand people were watching, and now understood that we are smart, and are stuck in bodies that don’t listen to our brains. They saw that we are typing by ourselves. The totally best part though was that Mouth to Hand’s real OG was rocking it with his bad self. Alex was beyond amazing. He was super smooth and sexy, and made the whole audience laugh. That was my favorite part - when he suggested that he and Cade get drunk, then typed toga! Toga! That was hilarious. Alex is my hero. I want to be just like him when I grow up.  10/6/2025 0 Comments ThoughtsThere is something we try to do that makes them stop in their tracks: I’m talking about the typing antagonists and message passing. That is hard to do. Talking is not when Judy CPs. I don’t know why…and that is the problem. Judy’s brain is quiet, so we have no distractions. Others’ brains are noisy, and they really make it more difficult. Mom’s brain is chaos. We totally have chaos in our brains, so the quiet is wonderful. Hallmark Moment: the love that she feels for us is forever the thing that helps us the most.  9/12/2025 0 Comments Freedom of SpeechToday I wrote a piece for the podcast, My Words are My Voice, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. I wanted to put it on my blog too. ______________ Inside me is so much. I am smart and have so much to say. But my stupid body totally does not work. It doesn’t allow my real thoughts to come out of my mouth. I talk for real by typing my words on a letterboard. But so many people don’t believe we are typing. Why they don’t, I really don’t understand. The facts are: my teachers and my Mom don’t touch me. They don’t move the letterboard. There is literally zero chance they are telling me what to say. All you have to do is watch me to see that. But the nonbelievers never take the time to actually watch us. They just deny me the right to talk in the way I can. I have to be home schooled because they won’t allow me to use this method in school. So what does freedom of speech mean to me? It means not only the right to say anything, but also the right to say it any way I choose. That is the meaning of freedom of speech: the right to express yourself.  6/28/2025 0 Comments My DadI am overly excited ‘cause my Dad is here today. He lives in Florida so I don’t get to see him often. I want him to see me spell so he learns how smart I am. I know that I look cognitively disabled on the outside and that my mouth says stupid things. I wanted my Dad to see the real Vinny. The real Vinny is me, and I am intelligent and funny. I hope that my Dad understands now.  5/9/2025 0 Comments Tipping PointThe world that forces us to be seen as cognitively disabled is on its way out. As more and more nonspeakers learn to type to communicate, there will be more pushback against the status quo. I believe that we are nearing the critical tipping point. Certainly the totally awesome world of typing needs to take over the universe. People who doubt our abilities are wrong. I’ll laugh in their faces some day.  The gala was beyond magical. Definitely I cannot say enough good things about it. My Mom made the room look like a fairy land. The grown ups got super dressed up. Mom looked like a princess; Judy looked like a princess too. That made it feel even more like a fairy tale. I loved everything about it. But the best part is always the presentation. If you are a speaker, you probably can’t understand how much that presentation means to us. When your photo comes up, you feel like you are totally floating on air. You feel so proud of yourself, which we never get to feel. It actually is the best night of the year. I already can’t wait until next year.  |
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May 2026
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