A Minute in the Mind of an ADHer

Do You Really Wanna Know?  Then I'll Tell Ya Damn It!

By  Bill Cottringer

     Okay, get ready  for a ride on the roller coaster down to Hell and back to Heaven. This is one single minute in the life of an ADHDer who has had 62 years of this insane shit and is ready to try to tell the rest of the world what  this one minute is like times a lifetime. I am sure this will confuse the majority of you but it may amuse fellow ADHD speeders not needing cocaine or Ritalin. The problem is I am listening to the "Best of Eric Clapton" on a very old but classy stereo right now and it is hard…extremely hard…no…impossible… to really concentrate. But what the heck, isn't this what ADHD is all about? You tell me. I think I know but I am not sure it is so. Never really am or so I wonder. Or so I try to remember.

      Why would I be thinking about three dead pine trees ruining my greenbelt view on my little porch that I just set up with a glass table, nice Pier One place settings and two fairly decent scenery photos  took of  Mt. Shuksan and Meditation Rock at Riverbend, eating a fairly excellent meal of grilled , marinated tri-tip steak, sautéed portabella mushrooms with fresh chives, and a real Caesar salad made from scratch on virgin white linen and fine china—and then drift off to the sad situation with my Hollywood actor nephew Sean who can't get away from the marriage blues, being groped by an uninvited randy rich guy and wondering if this is what his life is all about, hopeless parental rejection from his own un-accountability, and having total acting career melt-down frustration…then I hear Eric C. wondering if his dead son will know him in heaven…shit-fire! …back to my reality whatever the Sam Hill that is. I actually went to school with a guy by that name. Now I wonder how Sam is doing. Probably happy or unhappy or somewhere in between.

     Then I begin wondering about my relationship with a wonderful fellow Taurus, named Jane, being born three days ahead of me—but me in New Jersey and her in Kansas—with whom I have NEVER felt such close compatibility, attraction, and fond lovingness.  All I know is I love her with three hearts. I hope one will be enough, but I have to be extra prepared because of what I don't know. Four previous marriages aren't very assuring.  That doesn't count a few live-in relationships. But, haven't I learned a lot of valuable lessons from these failures? Of course, but will someone give me a damn chance? I think she will. And I will never forget her acceptance. That is what I need to practice what I preach. Forever and then some.

      But then again my ex-wife won't let go with her digs about how I don't walk my talk—I write about all this good way of being in on-line relationship articles and then can't stand tall to get past her moments of divorce unhappiness and resentments. I fail when it comes to the rubber meeting the road. No excuses. Shit times 100 or a gazillion infinity. Oh well, lucky me for ADHD, I have already moved on to remember a strange event back in Vietnam in 1964, that I was edified about by my friend Joe Goddu in Lexington, VA, who sent me Nguyen Cao Ky's Buddhist Child.  All these years I though I was a fool for volunteering my life and welfare for a corrupt country not even interested or capable of defending and living its own version of freedom. Crapo man, I wore sun glasses all the time at Murray State University in Kentucky and vehemently denied being a "baby-killer" with all honesty and sincerity. Oh my, that REALLY hurt. I don't think I will truly every get past this and it has been over 40 years.

    And, what they didn't know,  I puked behind the naïve protesting student's backs. Big chunks too from heavy nights before trying to forget. I claimed to be a ex-CIA agent when I was really a spy for the campus security director who was in cahoots with DEA against the infamous SDS out of Berkley. Ha…doing LSD and PCP with druggies had its moments. I became creative beyond my own wildest imagination. Just didn't produce any sellable products. Just more frustration.  I was cool though, at least until I couldn't sleep for a solid month before my youngest daughter Abby was born with a full ten toes and fingers, and no noticeable deformities, given a gorgeous pefect mom, but worrying about alerts to DNA mutations and then she was later diagnosed with classic ADHD at age 4 by a psychiatrist in Miami after less than 30 seconds, who just happened to go to Medical school with my bother-in-law, Al Kong, M.D., who loved that me and my other brother-in-law Dr. Richard R. Smith, a Glassboro lifetime unselfish educator nearly came to blows over the value of education, during a pool-side drink and eat-out.   

   Ah but, those were some totally insane but utterly enjoyable moments. One time in my farm house in Metrolopis, IL, home of Superman,  we wrote obsene aphorisms on the bathroom ceiling molding at 2 a.m. in the morning and had to repaint it the next day. By the way, Al is a master wood-worker and sashimi creator of silver salmon from Alaska beyond your wildest taste buds (but I beat the family with my version of soft-shelled crabs, at least so they say), besides being a retired orthopedic surgeon who got tired of responding to frivolous lawsuits to needlessly defend his conscientious professionalism. Oh well, he seems happy now. besides all the usual family strife. It is all in the attitude I guess.

     Now as I write this all, I have to stop and wonder what has this all got to do with anything that is really important today like the price of oil and the war in Iraq?. And I would like to sleep a bit, but, as a Security Company President, I have to take a recent threat by a spin-off of Earth First threatening some eco-terrorism pay-off for the so-called G-8 Conference in Russia tomorrow. I am thinking about this all worrying if I have gained too much weight from drinking too much Buchanan's Single Malt Scotch , after going to the Klahanie Fitness Center, to prevent such a dreadful event, before running home to find out if I had initiated a total disaster loading the Office 2007 Beta 2, reading about how you can't uninstall it and properly reinstall Office 2203. My IT consultant at work was leaving at his usual 3p and didn't have the time or inclination to tell me how much trouble I was in.

    Oh well!  That doesn't even include wondering how my two Siamese kitties, Klannie and Hannie from Klahanie are. I gave them to my workmate, Steve, because his wife is dying of Cancer, and it seemed  like a good thing to do. But I miss them buggers terribly. I really do. But I am not an Indian-giver. Does thast count for anything?

     But then again this doesn't have diddly squat to do with what is really on my mind.  What I am really worried about in no particular order because I couldn't possibly figure it out anyway is—Am I doing anyone any good at work? Will the church people like my new church web site that I spend ten hours designing? Can I find a workshop to make some Lords Prayer snippets for my true love at her spiritual retreat at Riverbend? They would honor the reverence of that wonderful place. Will my sister like the photo cards I have made for her?  Should I send my youngest daughter Abby $300 for her driver's course so she can get her license and go to college, or send a savings bond to my granddaughter Hannah for her birthday next week? But then again, I need to get away and do some serious photography on Route # 20 now that they opened it up past Diablo on the way to Winthrop and Twisp, where Willie Nelson used to strum and sing.  But there are some medical bills and old friends to pay back. It's a crap shoot isn't it?

     Before I can catch my breath with all this one minute, I get a call from my nephew Sean's land lord wandering if there is a connection between an ex-alcoholic police administrator by the last name of Mann, who is my good friend, and about whom I attempted to share some helpful information in a long therapeutic e-mail to Sean. The of course Simon and Garfunkle's album from the Concert at Central park comes on which reminds me of my first true love Jean McCandlish when she was pregnant and we went to Rider College and saw them from the front row and then I remember a concert over in Australia by them in the eighties, right after Central Park, and I hear on the news that Chicago had about a week of -70-degrees with wind chill, which I never could understand.  But I can't even get through that thought without wondering what my sister Nancy meant when she couldn't understand my interpretation of "Sounds of Silence." Then my other friend from Sidney writes and remind me about inflation over there and the nasty oil politics of Bush here and then I start worrying about increased patrol costs for our security business. But that has to take back seat to having to wake up early tomorrow morning to prevent the eco-terrorists from interrupting our security services at the oil refineries.

     Shit I am getting a frig'n headache worrying about non sensical things that are really uncontrollable. But who really cares. All you can do is try to figure out what you are supposed to be paying attention to. But that is what ADHD is all about. What to attend to? It is kind of hard when you are feeling pressured by tight clothes, whether to get one or two packages of gravy for the dry pork roast, thinking about leaving your lights on in your car or if you even locked it with your $6,000 worth of new digital camera equipment, or whether the extensive dinner you just cooked for yourself was really worth all the effort. Who the heck knows? I sure don't. No time to analyze.

      Now, I ask you—does this seem like just one short minute? It was the usual lifetime packed into of one minute, that just keeps happening by the hours, days, weeks, and years. If someone would have the sense to download my brain, there would probably be a whole lot of valuable ideas to work on. I just can't keep up with them. I guess that is why I write!

Bill Cottringer is an ADHD survivor who has hopefully turned the curse into a gift. His latest book, The Bow-Wow Secrets, is a personal version of a brain download of useful ideas, taken on a hiatus from ADHD. Go to Wisdom Tree Publishers for more information. Or contact the author direct at bcottringer@pssp.net