Re: Funniest ADD Moment — What's yours?

[Anonymous]

an employee at the petstore where i volunteer commented recently on how devoted i seemed to be to my voluntary work compared to all the other volunteers- i always stayed a good 4 or 5 hours looking after the adoptable shelter cats needs, when the rest of the volunteers seemed to be in and out of the place in just an hour or 2.

smiling, i explained that i didn’t think it was so much that i cared more or anything like that, but just that it took me about six times as long as them to get everything done, cos i was incredibly disorganised, easly distracted, wickedly ADD and would go from this job to another one, lose track of where i was, do a few circles, start something, leave it midway through and get sidetracked by something else,etc- all the while while explaining this i was gesturing and mimicing what i did, to elaborate (i’m one of those people who talks with their whole body and waves their arms a lot).

halfway through my elaborative roleplaying armwaving demonstration of distractability while scooping catlitter and petting kittens, she nodded, grinned, and then suddenly raised her hand excitedly, pointed to the right of me, and exclaimed loudly “oooh look! a kitty!” – at which point i rapidly turned to face the cat enclosures- thinking someone had escaped. after i’d done a quick cat-headcount, stared confusedly at them for a minute, and scratched my head, i did a double take… and turned back somewhat bewilderedly to see her bursting out with friendly laughter and wiping the tears from her eyes, before giving me a big hug and agreeing that she could see what i meant.

it turns out that she wasn’t trying to show me a kitty at all, just empathising and joining in with the whole gesturing explanation thing by interjecting with a classic catchprase example (that it seems i was unfamiliar with) of the way ADD people get thrown completely off track randomly by interesting things in their peripheral vision. like um… kitties.

way to both perpetuate a stereotype and manage to look like a total muppet, all in one easy move, jen.

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