October, 1996

“Mommy?”

That’s 8 year old Colin speaking; hair still blonde, face freckled, and baby teeth still in place.  Isn’t he such a cutie?

No.  He’s a nightmare.  Just wait.

“Yes, Colin?”

She most likely called me any one of several demoralizingly embarassing nicknames my family had for me when I was 8, but for my dignity’s sake, Colin works just fine.

“Could you take me to see Grandpa Joe this weekend?”
“Umm, I’m not sure.  It’s awfully last minute.  Why do you want to go there anyway?”
“I just....want to talk to him...”

Yea, thats totally not suspicious at all.

“Talk to him? About what?”
“I don’t know.... stuff”
“Colin...”
“OKwellthere’sthisassignmentandIhavetointerviewsomebodyandIhavetheGreatDepressionandit’sdueMondaysoINEEDTODOITNOW!
“Colin!  Are you serious?? How long have you known about this?”

It’s kind of ridiculous how many times I would hear that question over the next 10 years, worded the exact same way every time.  And every time my answer would be roughly the same:

“Well, she gave us the sheet at the beginning of the year, but...”
“But what?”
“I don’t know.  I forgot about it....”

Somebody tell me why I wasn’t diagnosed until age 20 again?
Needless to say, we went to see Grandpa.

My grandfather was always an old man to me.  He being 30 when he got married, and I being the last of four kids to my mother made it so that he was already 74 when I was born.  Unfortunately, this has resulted in my memories of him being limited, and sometimes he came off a bit grumpy.  

Growling a complaint at the poor waitress serving him in the retirement home dining room was a favorite pastime of his.  He always got bent out of shape when I would come up behind him, rub his shiny bald head and call him “Bald Eagle” (which, by the way, was stinkin’ hilarious).

Of course, the memories are positive, as well.  Like the time my sister gave him a tie dye t-shirt for Christmas, and he kept it for an entire year only to re-gift it back to her the next year.  And the time he sat with me for over an hour to help me with my 3rd grade project.

Strangely, this is the only conversation with Grandpa Joe that I can remember clearly.  I distinctly remember sitting in the library of his retirement home, asking him a simple question and writing furiously as he would go ahead and talk for 15 minutes straight.  I remember hearing about men jumping out of windows to escape the pressures and problems of the Great Depression.  I remember him talking about dropping out of school after 7th grade and getting a job to help his family make ends meet.  And I remember thinking that I wouldn’t be super disappointed if the market crashed again at that very moment.

It didn’t, and I had a three page paper to write.  With the interview was done, I popped up, stole one of his Werther’s Original candies because those were and still are the greatest candy of all time, and shouted a quick thank you as I scurried out the door.

When we got home, I pounded out a three page paper in the next few hours, if only because my mother picked me up by the neck, sat me in a chair, and held me there until it was finished.  Had it been up to me, I would’ve been outside playing, thinking the hard part was done.  The paper should only take half an hour now, is what I would’ve told myself.

But that’s my point.  I received a great grade on that paper; a giant red sticker if I remember correctly.  That means you did great in 3rd grade. “You’re the Bee’s Knees!”, it said.  Because, you know, I totally knew what that saying meant when I was 8. I was ecstatic.  

I was making a point.....

The point is, even though I got the interview done - last second as it was - I still would’ve failed to complete the assignment by underestimating the time it was going to take to write the paper.  ADHD-ers like me need people in our lives to sit us down and not let us back up until we’ve finished a task.  We need accountability, like the role my mom played.  But we also need those patient people, like Grandpa Joe, who are willing to help, even at the very last second, because we like working at the last second.  I would drown - I HAVE drowned- under a tidal wave of procrastinated tasks without people holding us accountable.

It’s the same reason I started this blog.  The original idea was to possibly put all these thoughts instead into a book.  I knew right away, however, that I would never finish that book just writing on my own.  Now that I have this public forum, however, I have accountability.  People know it exists, and are looking for more.  If I don’t tell the Bus story soon, I’m going to have some angry people cyber-knocking on my cyber-door.  That, along with the other reasons I stated earlier, is why I’m doing this.

I still have no clue what “The Bee’s Knees” means.