You day begins groggily with the feeble but honest thought, "I need to pray." You go to living room to pray and on your way, the need for a cup of coffee is overwhelming. You take a short detour to the coffee maker to start grinding coffee. As you are running the water for the coffee you are reminded that you have not used the bathroom yet since you woke up. You stop the running water and go to the Bathroom. In the bathroom you see a Magazine. This magazine has a very interesting article on the human genome project and you are reminded of the book that you were reading earlier in the week, "A brief History of Everything." This spurs you to go find the book and pick up where you left off. You leave the bathroom to find the book. Luckily it is in the other bathroom where you left it and you sit down in your bedroom to read it. You are happily reading away and realize that you have a bit of a headache. You need caffeine.....Coffee!. You go back to the Coffee machine and find that you have already ground the coffee you just need to pour the water in and press start. This you accomplish not 45 minutes after you first began this task. The coffee is running and you sit down for another chapter. As you read about genetics, the Eve gene, and finally the Human Body and how it is a miracle, something triggers in your mind and you remember that you need to exercise. "I'll go for a run and go work out" you say to yourself enthusiastically. You stop what you are doing and decide to change for working out. While getting ready your wife calls you and reminds you to mail off a CD on your way to church, to a person who bought online last night. This information somehow reminds you that it is Monday not Tuesday and you remember that you have students in an hour and a half and if you want to work out you need to do it quick. This puts you in a brief state of panic and rush. (the kiss of death for an A.D.D. man) Hurriedly you finish getting ready throwing on a t-shirt and a pair of tennis shoes you get ready to walk out the door. Opening the door, to your amazement you notice that you have forgotten a crucial item of clothing- shorts. You have your t-shirt, running shoes and a pair of underoos. Very annoyed and hurriedly you try to save some time by attempting put on a pair of running shorts over your shoes. You know that this could be disastrous but you try anyways. Five minutes later you have defeated the obstacle but this shorts-over-shoes challenge has left you in a greater hurry. You grab your keys and head for the door. Your mind is racing with how you are going to work out, take a shower, drop the CD off at the post office AND get to your lessons on time all the while small pictures of long DNA strands are flashing in your brain to confuse you further. Half-dazed, with towel and Ipod in hand, you reach the door. You then lift your car clicker to the door and try unsuccessfully to unlock the apartment door.... WITH YOUR CAR-DOOR CLICKER. After a perplexed moment or two you are aware of your lunacy and quickly check again for pants. Good. You have pants. You're out the properly unlocked Door, and you are on your way.
You work out in record time and hop in the shower. Out of the shower, you throw on some clothes. On your way out the door again you see the book that you put down before working out and grab it just in case you have a few no-shows for lessons.
By the end of this day, you have lost your keys a grand total of 6 times, left the CD at home that you were supposed to mail, left the coffee pot on without ever drinking a cup, tried to go workout half naked, attempted to unlock your front door to leave the apartment with your Car Clicker, forgotten to eat, missed the exit for the church, twice, on the way home you've gone to your old apartment complex thinking that you still live there (they actually look alike in your defense) and you never got to do the very first thing you set out to do at the beginning of the day, PRAY.
And let me tell you, their should be volumes on helping those of us with A.D.D. in Prayer, if we actually make it there. This should be a topic for a sunday-school class. "Prayer for bad concentrators." Much more usefule than that ever-so-fascinating study of Leviticus. ZZZZZZZzzzz
This of course does not include all the microcosms of A.D.D. episodes happening WHILE you are doing a task that you FINALLY remember to do.
Can I get an Amen. Can I get a witness.
Ultimately, I blame the TV.
8 comments:
This might be sort of funny, if it wasn't so true. And to be honest, I've never even been diagnosed with A.D.D. or anything similar. But this sounds so much like me it's scary.
I think I need to print this out and give it to my wife and say "See, I'm not the only person like this."
Actually, I think this might be the reason the Lord gave me the wife I have (seriously, I'm not trying to be funny here), because she knows how to keep me in line when I get lost too far down some unexpected rabbit trail.
More than half the time that I see the paper-towel holder in our kitchen is empty, and make my way (all of ten feet) down the hallway to get a new roll, I manage to forget what I was going there for, and end up in some other room, staring blankly around, saying "What the heck was I supposed to be doing again?"
My wife, on the other hand, can gracefully juggle twenty separate tasks and still remain completely focused on the completion of each and every one. She's really amazing.
Right in the middle of me posting this comment, she arrived home from grocery shopping with a carload of goods.
I'm fairly well-trained in this routine, and performed quite admirably, if I do say so myself. I asked "Would you like me to help you carry the groceries in?", and she said "Yes," and so I said "You just put everything away in the kitchen and I'll bring in everything from the car," and she agreed.
That works well for us, because she can quickly and accurately place many objects skillfully into the exact right place, while I can actually stay focused on the simple task of: Take Things from Car. Move Things to Kitchen. Set Things Down. Return to Car Repeatedly, Until Car is Empty. Close Car Trunk and Doors. Return to Work. (I work from a home office, for those that didn't know it).
I can't really blame the TV, because we've gotten in the habit of not turning it on much any more. I think the main reason we don't like the TV around here very much (at least, I don't), is because it adds just one more giant, unavoidable, attention-sucking distraction to an already fully-armed minefield of potential distractions.
"Honey, look at this! They're talking about the seasonal feeding habits of the south African spotted meerkat!"
C-Hammer, Man have I done that a time or two-thousand as well. I have also totally forgotten where I am driving and had to pull over to remember. Usually when that happens I have to think of something else, then it comes to me. I said I blame TV because I feel like much of our generation's conginitive patternes have been shaped by 30 second sound bites. Not only that but videos and editing cuts. Just take the average scene from a film. It is usually cut from at least 4 angles in a single 1 minute dialogue. Camera angles are getting so spectacular to keep our attention it is incredible.
Watch the movie Armegedon again. Notice that there is not a single frame left standing for more than 4 seconds. If you have been watching a steady flow of that kind of hypnosis for about 25 years straight for at least an hour a day, that has to do something to your mind.
Kat
HEY! glad you got the CD and liked it! Teresa is still one of my favs as well.
About the shorts, Well, these weren't boxers. They were kinda my reserve pairs. Anyway, nuff said.
All of that can actually get pretty maddening. When I do Yoga it isn't as bad.
An interesting story about that Teresa quote on the CD. I had this really cool guitar riff that was being played on the song and I copied it to disc as a solo cause' I liked it and wanted something to be spoken over it like one of the beatitudes. I found her reading this prayer online that I loved and just for the heck of it i lifted my mac laptop up to the other computer and recorded her into my laptop from the other computer's speakers. It seemed to line up perfectly with the guitar track AND when she was speaking this, wherever she was speaking it there was this random flute line playing in the distance, which happened to be in the same key that the song was in!! You can barely hear it in the recording. If it wasn't in the same key It wouldn't be on the CD. So I contacted the site and got permission.
So how I recorded it straight from the computer to the laptop is basically how it turned out. pretty cool huh? It was kind of amazing how even the rythm of her voice lined up with the cadences and rythm of the guitar. Only God could pull something that cool off.
So perhaps I could write the next blog entitled, "A Day in the Life of an A.D.D. Man's Wife."
Oh boy. C-Hammer, tell your wife I relate to her. It must a calling from God to be married to a severely creative and right-brained, A.D.D.-ridden man. I just didn't know he was calling me to it until AFTER we were married, when I realized the full extent of what A.D.D. meant. I knew the creative and right-brained part. Seth tricked me with the rest.
Can I get a witness?
I wouldn't give one day of it away.
Yes I do. I say again, Yes I do.
so stinkin' funny.
hi! im Philomena, im 17 from ireland. i saw your video on mother theresa on youtube, and i think that song is so gorgeous! is there anywhere to buy/download it?
Hi Philomena, Just caught your comment. Yes you can buy it! Just look us up on Itunes. Just type in Five Cent Stand and our CD should come right up.
Enjoy!
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