I go to a show every day. It’s the best show ever, so I’m pretty lucky. They always play what I want and the band lets me pass around their mp3′s like a bad flu. It’s the Hip Four with special guests The Pensations.
The Hip Four hail from various parts of the country. On the stage, Wallet keeps the crazy jungle beat going from the back pocket. ID Badge fulfills the vox and glamour needs from out front. Key Chain keeps the low-end steady and smooth from between belt-loops three and four in back (he prefers to stand near Wallet), and Cell Phone rides the lead front pocket like a bolt of lightning and a bat of hell.
Even with all that rock glory, I don’t think I can listen sometimes if I don’t think the Pensations will be there. Sometimes it’s Yellow BiC Brite Liner, Black PILOT Razor Point II (Japan), and Red PILOT Precise V5 – Extra Fine all at the same show. But even if it’s just two of them, it’s amazing. They all really know what they’re doing.
For those of you who also have Attention Deficit Disorder, you may already intuit that this is an extended and exaggerated version of the daily ritual of making sure I have the essentials I need with me before I leave the house for work. I realized at some point that the four things I always need – wallet, cell phone, keys, and ID Badge – are all located at my hip, more or less. Since I put my pens in my jeans pocket or shirt pocket, and they’re not entirely necessary all of the time, I gave them “special guest” status.
Almost without fail, I leave the house for work in something approaching a frenzy. Even though I currently (knock on wood) have the ideal work schedule for this ADDer (3pm to 12am), I still manage to have Just One More Thing to do before I am officially running late. The abbreviated and usually internal celebration of the Hip Four with Special Guests The Pensations happens just before I run out the door.
If you could hear my internal dialog around that moment, it would go something like this, “@&*#! (or: Jeepers!) Two minutes and I need to be gone! Okay. Kiss Meredith goodbye. Grab my bag. What do I want to listen to on the way to work? Drink the rest of your soy milk, dude. That’s perfectly good soy milk. Don’t leave it out! You’ll just have to put it away later. Crap. I’ll just wash it now. Wash, wash, wash. Wash, wash, wash. Okay, good enough. Where’s my bag? Got it. Okay. The stove is filthy! Kiss Meredith goodbye. She is totally annoyed by me running around the house and is thinking he probably doesn’t even remember that he already kissed me goodbye once already. Dogs! Everywhere! Lunch! Twins! Softball! There’s a cat hair on my tongue. Do I have any gas? One! Two! Three! Four! With special guests The Pensatiooooons! Woooooooo!”
At that point I’m quite probably past ready to go. I’ve achieved actual readiness long ago, but always feel like there’s something else that needs to be done. This is the feeling that would normally distract me long enough to forget, for example, my wallet. But I rarely forget those important items amidst the craziness of exiting the house with the help of that minor ritual.
You may think this is incredibly ridiculous, charming, or embarrassing, but trust me, it’s entirely necessary for many people with ADD/ADHD. These are the things that help us “keep up”, “stay on top”, or “perform to our potential”.
Yes, some of us pretend our wallets are awesome drummers. Don’t laugh. You’ve never seen a solo like my Wallet’s solo.
I also have a technique I’m developing for remembering to take the grocery list and canvas bags to the grocery store but I’d have to show you and I’m still working on the yoga moves that will make it reality.
What are your helpful, if not a little odd, techniques for remembering, focusing, retaining, etc?
I know this is an old post, but I just found it, and I wanted to tell you about this funny intersection of visual and verbal learning that works for me. When it comes to spelling, I’m one of those people who remembers how correctly spelled words look like– if something’s misspelled, it looks oddly unbalanced to me (same with when somebody mis-capitalizes things in titles or headlines– ack! Too much weight! It’s going to fall over!). But there are some words that just don’t stick, so I have to make some kind of image that goes with the correct spelling. Most recently, I figured out how to spell the word “moccasins” correctly every time. I always hesitated, not knowing if it was “cc” or “ss”. But then I looked at how the two “c”s curve around just like your toes curve around the top of your feet, and now I can remember. In Spanish, how do you remember that “cuchara” means spoon and “cuchillo” means knife? You can take a knife and cut down the middle of that double L in cuchillo, but you can’t do that with cuchara (but you can take a spoon and scoop out something delicious that’s in the bowl-like U).