Reply To: How do I Explain this to Others

[shutterbug55]

The way I explain it to other people is like this:

I have a neighbor who lost his license to drive a few years ago. When he needs to get to the store, he hops on his rider lawn mower and goes to the store  at 1 mph. On the way he sees bugs, plants, birds, trees and rocks. If one of them gets his attention for a while, it’s no big deal, because he can’t get too far off course, and when he returns to task he is once again on his way to the store. He returns with the milk, eggs, or bread he set out to get.

An ADD brain is like going to that same store, but we are in Mario Andretti’s Ferrari going 200mph, with no idea how to use the breaks. We see a whole lot of birds, trees, bugs, and rocks and if we get distracted by something capturing our attention, we will be in Portland, before we know it. At the end of the day, we will be full of stories of what we saw and the places we have been.

Yet it is the milk and eggs people will ask about and it is the milk and eggs that we forgot, because of all the cool things we saw. So I tell them. We are not any smarter or dumber than anyone else, our thoughts travel at different speeds and different paths and the things we see and the journey we take sometimes pushes aside the goals we had at the beginning. This is because we sometimes see so much, we get overwhelmed and can’t take it all in.

This seems to get the conversation going with people who are unfamiliar with ADD, or people who have limited knowledge on it.

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