I am technically not a doctor, ergo I cannot formally diagnose myself with ADHD. This is despite what my medical colleagues, Drs. Google and WebMD, have offered in terms of second and third opinions.
Twenty-plus years ago, before this info was readily available on the internet, I went to see Fletch’s ADHD doctor after I was added to his insurance. I was curious if I might have it, too, as I would go only one of two ways—either hyper-focusing to my detriment, or not focusing at all, again to my detriment. Don’t even start me on the procrastination. And if there were an instance where I had to sit still for an extended period of time, like in a meeting or a movie theater, I couldn’t (and still can’t) do it without fidgeting and shifting the whole time.
Mostly I wanted to try Adderall because Fletch lost weight on it.
(Brief aside—when I was taking classes at Second City, one of the kids I met mentioned she’d pay $10 a pill for my husband’s Adderall if he ever wanted to sell any. Entrepreneurial though I am, I had to decline, saying, “He sort of needs them to live.”)
After five minutes of medical consultation, the doctor told me I was probably just bored. Looking back, this feels fairly insulting. He also thought my name was “John Fletcher” so it’s possible I should not have put much stock in his diagnosis. Honestly, though, being bored did sound like me. Then Fletch lost his job and we both lost his insurance, so I never pursued the issue. (I think this scene is documented in Bitter, but I don’t know because I really hate that book, largely because it makes me anxious.)
Anyway, my MaybeHD takes the form of rabbit-holing when I’m hyper-focused. Much like Alice in Wonderland, I will venture into that rabbit hole until I find the answers I want, regardless of whatever else I have to do. For example, a few years ago, I was on deadline. Like, I had to finish my edits because I had to get paid if I wanted to keep the lights on. As I was taking a break to eat lunch, I ran across some weird CCTV footage of a home invasion in Deerfield. Deerfield is one of the fancier Chicago suburbs and was close to where I lived. The criminals had held the residents at gunpoint as they took more than $10K in cash and loads of jewelry.
Yikes.
I lived in the suburb where clueless residents would leave the keys to their luxury cars unlocked in their driveways, so I wasn’t surprised that criminals had finally caught on to the easy pickin’s the North Shore offered.
However, as I read the article that went along with the video footage, the victims’ details of the crime didn’t match up with the description of what happened, nor did the tape. The perfectly framed footage showed an old lady on her knees with her hands up in front of a masked robber holding a weapon. Very scary! Except there was also a little kid sort of lurking in the background snacking on what appeared to be Fritos and a yap-yap dog lounging on the back of a couch, completely unbothered. Their energy was incongruent with the scene. Also, it looked to take place in a crappy duplex apartment, not a Deerfield mansion.
The math wasn’t mathing, so down the rabbit hole I went.
The more I dug, the less sense it made.
The whole thing had so much hair on it that after I finished my lunch, instead of going back upstairs to tie myself to the chair with my bathrobe sash so I couldn’t wander off during edits, I took myself to Deerfield.
As I drove around and surveyed the scene, the whole thing got curiouser and curiouser…
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