Indoor Camping: Fixing Up the Fixer-Upper

Monday, November 29, 2004

Attention Deficit What?

“You don’t understand,” Cheyenneh says. “You’re old. You don’t need Adderall; that’s disgusting. I do. I’m A.D.D. I need help.”

I’m too A.D.D. myself to remember to do something about it for several months. When I remember and I’m near a phone, I call a family counselor who’s recommended for his work with impulsive and distracted people. He calls right back, right when Cheyenneh and her friends come home from school.

He very calmly explains what the terms A.D.D. and A.D.H.D. mean, the diagnosis process, and a few other things I missed because I wasn’t paying attention.

“There’s no blood test or anything,” he says, “so it’s a process of elimination.”

Cheyenneh starts singing in the background. It sounds like singing, at least at first, like she’s making fun of a song while she’s singing it. The longer she sings, the more it sounds like pure screaming.

“First I meet with you,” he says.

“LAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAA-AAAAAA!” Cheyenneh sings/screams.

I run to the farthest, most opposite part of the house so he can’t hear her. I can’t hear him, she’s so loud. We’re getting a bigger house when this one’s done, that I decided just now.

“Then we do some tests. I’ll meet with her then we’ll all meet together.”

“LAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAA-AAAAAA!”

“Does that sound like something you’re willing to do?”

“LAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAA-AAAAAA!”

“Yeah, sure,” I say. “Anything.” I hang up before he asks another question.

I sit in down in the therapist’s office as calmly as I can. I notice every time I start wiggling my foot or play with my rings and I stop. When did I get so fidgety? There goes my foot again.

While he’s talking, I do a little of my own observation. Jim, our financial-planner-Pastor-counselor, told me he once went to an A.D.D. therapist. “The guy spent most of his time trying to line up his toe and something on the carpet,” he said. “He was worse than me.”

After thirty seconds, I have confidence this is a different therapist. He’s looking at me and sitting still. He’s listening to everything I say without blinking. I already talk fast and with his undivided attention, I’m talking even faster. I’m not used to talking without being interrupted. How do I know when to stop talking if he doesn’t cut in?

I tell him we live in a fixer-upper. I tell him this is my tenth one. I don’t tell him it’s becoming a crutch so I don’t have to dust.

“What happens when you sell this house?”

“Buy another fixer.”

“Has she moved often?”

“We’ve lived in 33 places before we moved to Oregon. She’s lived in five houses off the same street in the past eight years, except for the year she lived in England. That wasn’t off the same street.”

“Do you realize you’re a perfect Petri dish breeding ground for ADD? It’s a chicken/egg thing. Do you move around a lot because you have ADD or do you have ADD which makes you move around a lot?”

I have to think about this so I stop for decaf at Peet’s. The manager asks how we’re doing with our car situation. We had to stop in here several times while used car shopping, just to focus. Not many people buy two completely different used cars for two completely different kids at once. Not without a lot of Peet’s, that is.

“My Dad’s the same way,” he said. “He’d come home driving a new car all the time.”

“Most people stick with something and don’t get bored,” I said. “I don’t know how they do that.”

“My Dad gets bored with houses, too. I lived in 18 houses before my 18^th birthday. All in the same town. He just got bored.”

“I want to meet him,” I tell him. I want to meet another parent who’s a Petri dish ADD breeding ground. If I’m doing anything to breed a Peet’s manager, I want to continue. Some people want their kids to be Doctors. I dream of offspring wearing a Peet’s apron.

“He’s retired,” the manager says, “but he’s still that way. He just bought a house in Vancouver, got bored, bought another house in Camas and rented out the first one. Now he’s talking about getting third one. Can you believe it?”

“I’m jealous.”

I can’t stop thinking about A.D.D, except when I’m distracted and think of about a hundred other things, all at the same time. I wonder if I need meds? Instead of going to a Doctor, I go to Borders and look at books. I bring Charlie and the skater boys, so I don’t I get distracted and end up at Peet’s.

Why are there so many books about A.D.D. written with big words in tiny type? Several of them are over 300 pages long. I can’t read that many words. Not without a good plot or interesting characters.

“Here’s a good one,” I say. “It’s got big words.”

“Big words as in hard words?” the Vegan asks.

“No, big, tall words,” I say. “Easy words. And it’s only 150 pages long.”

“There are books on A.D.D?” the Vegan says. “Shouldn’t they only make books on tape about A.D.D?”

“They should sell pop-up books on A.D.D,” Speed Racer says.

The “Driven to Distraction” book has a list of symptoms. If I don’t have one of the symptoms, Charlie does. We share about ten conditions.

“I’ve been wishing I was like everybody else and didn’t get bored of things so fast,” Charlie says. “I’ve had a ton of psychological tests because I’m a Cop. No one ever told me I was A.D.D. I thought A.D.D. was when you couldn’t sit still, you couldn’t read a book, you were just hyper: a crankless crankster.”

“The therapist said you don’t have A.D.D. if you aren’t impulsive,” I said. “Guys are usually physically impulsive and restless. Females are more often verbally impulsive. We think it and it comes out; there’s no filter.”

“It all fits. I can’t sit still for more than a half hour at my desk. I can’t finish anything.”

“I’m usually too distracted to notice.”

“I only like to start things and get them going. That’s fun and exciting. When it gets boring, I move on to something else.”

“What?”

“I’m kind of relieved,” Charlie said. “I thought there was something wrong with me. There is, but I’m not mentally ill. I’d rather be A.D.D. than schizophrenic. I thought I might be, but I never met a schizo cop. You give someone a warning then you turn around and give them a ticket; that wouldn’t be good.”

“Do you think Cheyenneh’s A.D.D. or just trying to survive living with us?”

“Chey’s so focused, she doesn’t realize anything else is going on around her. We’re a lot more distracted than she is. She’s driven, we’re distracted. We’re easily distracted. If you don’t think so, look at our house.”

The next time I see my financial-planner-Pastor-counselor friend Jim, I watch him closely. He’s probably the only professional person I know who admits he’s A.D.D. People trust him with their finances. I don’t trust myself with anything.

“I was sitting next to my little nephew yesterday,” he said. “He was squirming, wiggling, and having a hard time sitting still. I looked over at him and thought ‘that was me at that age. Thank God for maturity.’”

“I don’t know if it’s maturity,” I said. “I think you ought to take credit for all the hard work and discipline you’ve learned to be who you are.”

“What? Sorry, I was thinking of something else. I’m kidding,” he said.

I call up my Mom for Thanksgiving. I started talking about one thing, got distracted and started talking about something else. “Sorry,” I said. “I forgot what I was talking about. I’m so A.D.D.”

“No, honey,” she said, “You’re not A.D.D. You’re A.D.H.D, remember? You were on Ritalin and you were so depressed I made the doctor take you off of it. The Doctor was an ass and said, ‘Since you know so much, you fix her.’

“I talked to your teacher and realized why you were A.D.H.D. Your teacher was so boring I started to feel A.D.H.D. just meeting with him. I never put you on anything again.”

For about five minutes, I had a huge amount of respect for my Mom. Then I got distracted thinking about being diagnosed with A.D.H.D. for Thanksgiving and realizing Ritalin once ran through my veins.

I can’t say, “Sorry, I went A.D.D,” when I get distracted. Not when I really am going A.D.D. It’s funnier when it’s not true.

It’d bother me, but I’ve moved on whether I wanted to or not. I remember doing something else before I got distracted and started writing this. I don’t smell anything burning so I think I’m safe. I’m going to look around, though, just in case.

A little help? [] 4:28:20 PM