By Wyatt Anderson
MCP Staff Reporter
I’ve been through so many jobs, it embarrasses me. Many times my former bosses would come up to me and tell me,“You’re a kind person but your too slow…You have good people skills but you’re lazy and inefficient at your tasks…” Every time I tried to explain the reasons as to why I had a hard time doing as they asked, some bosses would say, “ADHD isn’t real!”, others would ignorantly state “Everyone has a little ADHD in them.” Never once would they allow me to explain how I process instruction, and my job would either end with“We’re still friends don’t worry” or “You insult my intelligence.”
Yes, I have been, in the classroom setting, where my sixth grade math teacher tried as hard as she could to move me into the “Special Ed” classes. “You dream too big. You are in your own world too much to succeed in life,” she would say to me. Yes, math was, and is to this day my hardest subject to learn. In math classes, its like my dyslexia is amplified when I see so many black numbers crowding a white piece of paper, only to find one little numerical factor. Everything flips and flops, backwards and forwards, up and down. Headaches squeezed my brain, as my mind would purposely go into a daydream to ease the stress and pain. Yet, my math teacher never considered that the student she called worthless, had more potential than she, within many aspects.
Whenever I told a teacher or boss, I need more details, it meant, I NEED DETAIL! Bosses would give me a task to work such as, “organizing the shop” and leave me to it alone. Every interview that I had, organization was the first thing on my list of downfalls. Sure, I could organize anything, if the boss or teacher would write it down in detail how it was to be done. I am a man with the mind of detail. Where do you want stuff? What shelf level? How do you want this task to be carried out? When do you expect a finish time? This would consist of a simple five minute explanation, yet most of my former bosses considered it a “a waste of time” to explain any instruction in detail. It was as if they would intentionally scratch the surface of instruction. Most bosses or teachers never appreciated the work I did, when putting all head-aching effort into doing their monotonous tasks. Their constant response to my effort was always nothing more than, “You took too long”.
Through the battle of dyslexia with numbers and words, I found my detail hungry mind eagerly bringing to me a desire to write. I discovered writing had become my escape from the insults of teachers, bosses, and my insecurities of every day life. I do everything I can to describe every detail I take note of. Thinking of my own original full length stories within a matter of seconds, comes natural to me, because my mind is moving that fast! And sorry to say for my sixth grade math teacher, I can still remember every little detail about her. That squeaky voice, stiff black hair with so much starch, and the crooked witch like nose on her wrinkly face.
For others who have truly been diagnosed with ADHD, you’re not alone with that unappreciated feeling, when others who think they are smarter than you, are looking down on your performance. When it feels like no one appreciates your work, or the insecurity, of constantly wondering and trying to conclude what others are thinking of us. Those restless nights when we have a bright idea, and cannot sleep because our minds our traveling at the speed of light, with the many options and plans in witch to bring our dreams to life. Our bodies screaming sleep, but our minds shouting think! The high and low, the Ritalin and Adderall gives us with the sour stomachaches and zombie like feeling, as our true God given personalities are being sucked away, for hours at a time by the medication.
What the many ignorant bosses and teachers don’t realize about us, is that we, ADHDers have the greatest potential to become the biggest assets in their companies and classrooms. Yet, they overlook our strengths writing us off with a mental disorder or just plain laziness, because we are different that than the rest. We don't think in the same manner they do, therefore we are incapable of contributing to society in their narrow minds.
What they don't want to admit is that they need us. They don't want to admit that they feel so comfortable in a boxed in, walled up brain, to think outside and see the bigger picture, like we do. Their minds are like people on a planet, confining them to the things that only make sense to them wherever they go, while we are the astronauts of their world! We hate confinement, the feeling of limited space. Our minds are always moving like an exploring spaceship! Our imaginations desperately need the vast, endless space outside the box, to keep up with our mind’s constant, nonstop movement! Our minds thrive richly in that endless space. We see their planet from above, and infinite unexplored space beyond! We have the intelligence to relay new discoveries and ideas back to their confined space port “on earth”. They need our detailed minds to “hunt and gather”. They are the lazy ones! We do all the work for them because they want to be so logical about their surroundings.
When a boss accused me of being lazy or seeming to walk in circles, little did he know, I was taking note of every detail around me. My mind has constantly moves with no brakes, because it doesn’t know how to do anything else. When something really targets my interest, I can fire a laser focus so powerful it can extract anything.
We are the investigators of the world, the risk takers, and foreseers of the future for mankind. We brought human flight, horseless wagons, lightbulbs, and atomic bombs into their world, when they told us over and over, in their “logical” boxed in minds, it was completely impossible and illogical. They are the ones living in the prison while we freely roam the unknown, bringing them back luxury, and safety, and doing it freely in our leisure at that. We are their entertainers, the court jesters, while they unknowingly sit in their comfortable enclosed, jail cell like world, laughing at us. When in “reality” logic is their prison holding them back. All they see is their comfortable wall, believing that trapping us in a box makes us smarter people like them. However, it only hurts us like a mangled dove in a snare.
Our curiosity makes us the mechanics and artists that paint their logical world with detail and color. Everything outside the box captures our attention and curiosity. We put our God crafted senses to use more than anyone else. Yes, we learn more artistically than the narrow minded, logical teacher in the classroom. We have to see it, touch it, feel it, smell and taste it, to understand why and how, when and where. So we blast off at the speed of light to go discover new things, that absorb our interests.
Some of us know numbers, some of us know words, some of us know art, and some of us know it all of the above! When we combine into one and take it all out of the box to, explore…excuse me, day dream the unknown, we expand knowledge. The knowledge they claim we don't have because, our minds work much different than theirs.
So yes, the world may see our downfalls like inattention, impulsivity, hyperactivity and un-organization, but fact remains that our tasks are spread out so we can see the full picture. This is how we connect the dots. We make great writers and journalist, actors and doctors, and when it comes down to complete and total chaos, our emergency response senses are what bring others to the hospital during times of emergency. They can thank our multitasking minds and laser focus for that ability.
The next time a boss or teacher tries to impound that spaceship mind of ours within a boxed in gate, blast off and let them know that they cannot fashion us into something we were not created to be. We were meant to wander the frontiers of the unknown discovering new logic and bringing the illogical into reality. We were intelligently designed to go hunt the dangers and risks many logical people fear to track down. We are the hunters and gatherers, the curious investigators of this world. We can accurately predict and see cause and effect from the other angle, above and below, inside and out.
