ADHD families can be good!

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone!

My story is somewhat unique and may give pause for (positive) thought!

I grew up the youngest in a family of four ADHD children as well as two ADHD parents. Having much older siblings who were more deviant than I helped take the focus off me! Also when your parents were as busy as mine (my father was a police officer and my mother was just trying not to lose her mind) , it was easy to do my thing my way and not get noticed for being ‘different’. Typical days in our household include the following….

We lived out in the country surrounded by farms. While babysitting me, my sisters decided to bring a horse, that they borrowed for the occasion, into the house. For no reason. Mom found out and pandemonium ensued.

At Christmas one year, my oldest sister bought her boyfriend a spider monkey for a present. It got out of the cage, bit her and hid in the Christmas tree. She ended up at the hospital. My other sister was unable to attend her big dance that night because the monkey ripped out her fancy Christmas hairdo (complete with a ‘wiglet’) while she was trying to extricate it from the tree. The monkey was decorating the presents in a rather unglamorous manner. I was slapped by my mother for laughing. Hysterically.

My brother had a motorbike and was riding a friend around the fields while they were blind drunk for the first time at the ripe old age of sixteen. When my brother finally came home, it was dark out and noticed his pal was no longer on the back of the bike. Because the headlight on the bike was broken, my mother made my brother tape a flashlight to the front and go out into the dark in search of his friend, whom he found much later sleeping in a raspberry bush, having fallen off after they hit a bump.

The three of my siblings were caught by a neighbour attempting to jump off a second story roof with a parachute that belonged to someone’s brother from the armed forces. My mother caught them and again, pandemonium ensued.

Growing up, I had it drilled into me that I was ‘not like the other three’ and that I ‘was the good one out of the bunch’ ! When was the last time you heard THAT! (guffaw!)

Oh, I used to do stuff, but I learned, by watching my sibs, to not get caught. Learning by observation is the best way!

The bottom line for me is that it all depends upon who you grew up with, hang out with and work with! The more regular folk that you find yourself surrounded by, the more you’ll stand out..which is not necessarily a bad thing!

I’ve had the great luck to be surrounded by family, friends and co-workers who are all, it turns out, ADHD and have never once felt ‘unusual’. I’ve always lived and worked in the world of ADHD and have discovered just in the last few years that yes, we are different. We have superpowers that other people don’t have. I was shocked that most other people are not like us! Energetic multi-taskers always filled with ideas! Creativity! Enthusiasm! I had no idea everyone wasn’t like this!

I hope this helps anyone out there who feels ‘different’ or isolated. You are not alone..you are special and have talents! Don’t be afraid to use them and do things your way in order to get things done. (So what if i clean all the rooms in my house at once rather than one at a time? …..snore…)

Keep moving forward.

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[Anonymous]

Hi MerryMac – I LOVE this story! Thanks so much for sharing it with the community. Where in the world did you get a spider monkey??

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[Anonymous]

Hi Aerin!

Glad you like the story..I have many many more! (Some involve homemade stilts, witch’s brews, fishhook in the forehead, numerous trips to the emergency room etc etc..))

It was1967 or thereabouts and they didn’t have the same animal protection laws that they do now, I guess. She bought it at a pet store in London Ontario. She was freinds with all the local vets, kind of like a local ‘Dr. DoLittle’ and ended up the next year with a pet skunk as well.It was not the ideal pet as it kept stealing all the toilet paper to make nests under the claw-foot bathtub…

Not nice when you have to steal your Charmin from a skunk nest…

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[Patte Rosebank]

Fish-hooks can make for some great stories!

A couple of years ago, my dad and his friend-since-childhood, Jerry, went fishing. Jerry did a big, dramatic cast-off…

…and hooked my dad’s ear.

Luckily, Jerry is a doctor. Unluckily, he didn’t have any anesthetic, other than booze. So Dad had a few shots, and Dr. Jerry performed the necessary surgery, right there on the dock…after taking a few photos, of course. Dad has a framed enlargement of one of them, on the wall next to his computer.

I swear, the older my dad and his buddies get, the more they seem to belong at Possum Lodge.

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[trashman]

thanks, all so great . short so even i can read along.love them keep them coming.

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[Anonymous]

What happened to the primate?

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[Anonymous]

The little spider monkey went to a good home with a lady who was an animal lover.

My sister was close with a local vet and they had a bit of a network going for neglected or unusual animals.

The vet asked her to take care of a wild skunk for awhile until he found it a home. It had been injured and brought to him.

She said it was a pain because it would unravel all the toilet paper and make a nest under her old claw-foot tub!

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[Patte Rosebank]

Skunks are really cute animals. There’s one who lives under my parents’ barn. They call it “Petunia”. (The skunk, not the barn.) I once saw a family of them crossing the road out there. They were all in a straight line, bouncing along, just like Pepe Le Pew.

Skunks aren’t the only wildlife living at my parents’ place. There are raccoons living in the top of the barn. Once, when I stayed overnight in my old room, I was awakened by four little ones, peeking in my window and watching me. Then I heard a chattering from their mom, and three of them quickly scampered off, but the fourth kept watching me until its mother called it again (I never knew a raccoon could sound just as exasperated as a human parent), and then it very reluctantly left.

And once, a partridge, blitzed out of its mind on the rotten wild apples that lay all over the ground, flew right into my parents’ dining room window, shattering it. The poor bird was so badly injured that Dad had to do a mercy killing. Evilly, my brother and I named the bird “Danny”. We suggested cooking & eating him, because wild partridge is a delicacy, but Mom was horrified at the idea, so Dad dragged Danny into the forest, so the other wild animals could dine on him…which is what happens to animals that die in the wild.

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[Anonymous]

“Not nice when you have to steal your Charmin from a skunk nest…”

Not nice when a giant slams your bedroom door, stinks up the room, then steals your bedding either…;-}

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