“It’s Not Me…It’s You”
I think I’m surrounded by morons.
Not my family…not my friends…not anyone I know—it’s not us, it’s others.
This whole ADD thing is, if you ask me, a big, fat giant fabrication conjured up by morons to mollify the tender insecurities of morons. And its close cousin, ADHD, is just another bastard child from the same circus sideshow. Except this one gets more medication.
All my life, I’ve suffered odd looks from pretty much everyone I’ve ever known. The very first time I noticed it myself was around first grade, but mom tells me it was kindergarten when it what I’m about to go into first showed up on the scene.
[Scene: First day of kindergarten where teacher interacts with child and then comes and confers with child's mom]
Teacher: “…um.”
My mom: (Not even blinking. I was third in a litter of five, so she couldn’t care less if she was about to hear I’d just grown wings and flown out the window.) “Something wrong.”
Teacher: “Well. No. No, nothing’s…wrong. But…”
My mom: “Yes?”
Teacher: “Well…it’s just that everything he supposed to know, he doesn’t know.”
My mom: “A ha.”
Teacher: “Yes. And well…it’s also that everything he’s not supposed to know…he knows.”
My mom: (laughing at the rookie) “Good luck.”
Nothing particularly astonishing about that little flashback, I know. Except that it was the beginning of a lifetime of weird looks, RCA dog head tilts, and no shortage of raised eyebrows brought on by either my questions, my decisions, my perceptions, my drawings, or some other manner of how I connected the dots in my head. Because none of it ever appeared linear. Or possessed any observable method of anything like structure. That is, to the people outside my head. Who have sort of always gotten on my nerves.
Not you, it’s others.
The easy explanation is that I’m what’s called a Synesthete. Which just happens to be a $15-dollar word flying around the last several years having something to do with how a mind maps the world around it, and gleans, processes, forms, digests, and then presents information.
*yawn, I know.
The more popular word employed for this sort of consciousness is this ADD thing I hear far too much of.
So I decided long ago that I would categorically reject the notion, the diagnosis, and the idea that I am unable to hold one thought from start to finish, affording the reader, the observer, the conversationalist, whatever it is they typically seek in order to gather whatever it they gather. Which I have.
So it’s not that “I have ADD,” it’s that the rest of the world is (how to say this gently) made up of morons who can’t keep up.
And that photograph up top? Well, believe it or not, that happened all by itself the other day while I was making breakfast for the Spawn and being Marty Stewart. The maddening part is that, though I had the whisk in my hand when I reached over to grab the pancake mix, the move was blocked by the eggs sitting there on the counter. And instead of knocking one off and making a nice mess, it somehow worm-holed its way inside the whisk, just like you see in that photo.
I swore at first because I thought for sure it did what my unseeing eyes expected. That is, sent egg-onto-floor. But when I turned my head to try and catch egg-flying-off-counter, I was stunned to see that Very Self-Contained egg was fully intact on the inside of the utensil designed to beat and scramble its innards into kingdom come.
And that…reminded me of my brain.
And how it never has
and never will
succumb
to the expectations of the world in which it’s contained.
And that very much frustrates The World…because it is heavily invested in beating and scrambling everything it encounters.
Ha.
Rookie.
“Good luck.”
YES!!! Finally! I have always said that “ADD” is a strategic advantage! …SQUIRRLE!!
John…exactly my conviction. We have to keep a lot of plates spinning. And on each plate…a moron.
Well, regardless of the reason, I still think I’m surrounded by morons. As Will Smith said in Men In Black, “A person is smart. People are stupid.”