I was scrolling through TikTok earlier today and I came across an advertisement for a lock box in which you place your cell phone.
"Do you have ADHD like me? Are you constantly distracted by your phone?" the the video asked.
I felt called out. I have never been tested for ADHD. Back in the day a diagnosis of ADD (they hadn't added the H when I was little) meant that you would never grow up and have a normal life. You would be one of those adults that ate soft foods and worked as a grocery store bag boy for the rest of your life. Grocery store bag boy isn't even a job anymore!
Grocery store bag boy was my first job actually. I once received some unsolicited career advice. My manager met me at the front of the store, I had just walked a single empty cart back into the store after helping a customer cart their freshly purchased groceries out to their car. My manager smiled and asked why I didn't gather all the empty carts while I was out in the parking lot.
I don't remember what my answer was, though I imagine it was something like, "It simply didn't occur to me."
She then said something to the effect of, "You need to show initiative if you want to move up in the company. Don't you want to move up in the company someday?"
I looked around the grocery store, and I thought about the small office that over looked the row of cash registers at the front of the store, I thought about the people that worked in the deli department (in my mind they seemed like hardened adults, something akin to old school whale hunters. It was a miracle they had all their digits in tact), and the small employee break room, and the weird anti-union video they made me watch the first day after I was hired and I said, "No."
This plays out far more cinematically in my mind than how it happened in real life. In my head this woman could see the gears in my head turning as I slowly cane to the realization, at the far too young age of 15, that life was nothing but an endless spinning hamster wheel and we workers were nothing more than fodder for other people to profit off of. Truthfully she probably thought I was just being smart ass kid.
But the reality was that I wasn't that smart. I was simply answering the question with the most sincere honestly. To me, working at the grocery store into perpituty seemed like a horrible life and I felt bad for her.
Looking back now I realize a few things.
1. This woman was probably in her 20s, but my young teenage brain simply registered her as "adult age"
2. This would not be the last time I would be asked a question like this by someone who managed me at a place we both worked for money, and every single time I get asked I eventually come around to the same answer, though not always in the moment.
3. I have been a manager of people before and in a professional setting no less. And if asked, "how does one move up in this company." I would say, "show initiative." but I try to keep my unsolicited advice to a minimum. Had I been in charge of me I would most likely tell younger me, "hey remember get all the empty carts while you're outside." and left it at that.
4. This poor girl was just trying to do the right thing I guess, but still, over 20 30 years later, I do not understand why she would take it upon herself to help Kroger look for best and brightest. Kroger will never repay that kindness to her. The location closed in the mid 2010s anyway.
5. Shoot. What if the Kroger closed down because no one wanted to step up?
I ended up leaving that job after I was passed over for promotion. A family friend got me job at the local Montgomery Ward as a sales clerk in the small electronics section, which felt like quite the step up from grocery store bag boy. Now I was selling Walkmans and palling around with the hot shots that sold the big screen TVs.
This meant that I had passed the first test in not being one of those kinds of kids. Sure I had my quirks, but I wasn't a slow kid! (Back in the 90s "Slow" was the agreed upon polite way of saying someone had any sort of cognitive disorder, no matter the severity. It also should be noted that I'm just speaking to the potentiality of being diagnosed with ADD- heaven forbid someone found out their kid was on the Autism spectrum)
I never thought much about how difficult it was for me to perform certain tasks. I just thought concentrating was harder for some people than others, and that I was fated to feel like I was forever doomed to be a little late to every literal and metaphorical party just cause.
I'm not really superstitious, or prone to believing in off theories, but this was an actual thought I had, that my flightiness was baked into my DNA, and I guess in a way it is- but for my it was more mystical than medical.
My mother once told me that after about two years of unsuccessfully trying to start a family the old fashioned way, they (mom and dad) had all but given up on the idea and had started meeting with adoption agencies when I finally came into the picture. Apologies to whatever kid at the orphanage I potentially screwed over. I had great parents. You would have loved them.
Mom then went on to say that I blew past the due date by a few weeks and they had to endure labor because even back then I didn't like leaving the house. I don't remember if she said anything about a particularly long labor process. I was either grossed out or distracted by this point in the conversation.
But the one thing I took away from that story was that I was late for my own life, so it only makes sense that I feel late to everything in life right?
Yes it was a ridiculous way of thinking, but it was my ridiculous way of thinking. There was no reason to get tested for anything. I was cursed from birth.
All that is to say that even if it had occurred to or my parents (or me) to get tested for some kind of neurological divergency, that was not a dark alley we would have wanted to look down anyway. Also, I graduated college (after five years) so obviously I was fine (according to my family).
All that is to say I have never been officially diagnosed with ADHD.
Still, whenever I see those videos that purport things like, "If you have ever stubbed your toe, you probably have ADHD" I think to myself, "I've stubbed my toe plenty of times. I'm pretty sure the left pinky toe was broken back when I was in my 20s"
I would try and get some sort of diagnosis as an adult. Occasionally I think to myself, "What if I'm a simple prescription of Adderall away from making tons of money buying a house and finding that one special someone to settle down with?"
But I live in a post capitalistic hellscape that is America. My medical insurer is far more interested in making money for shareholders than keeping me healthy. I know this because I work for one of the top five US health insurance companies.
I honestly can't tell you how insane it drives me that my employer provided medical insurance is so awful when I work for the actual insurance company. You would think they would give their employees the super secret good insurance as an employee perk. I mean I got a 10% discount as a bag boy at Kroger. (Honestly I think my mom was quite sad when I quit the grocery store job because she was saving 10% on her weekly grocery bill. And honestly mom, if you're listening, I get it). But no. I get the same insurance as the rest of you. The kind with tiers and in-network doctors that are always 45 minutes away. The kind that makes you think, "should I get this checked out or would it just be easier to die?"
Corporate America is awful.
So this advertisement was telling me that I could purchase this thing that sort of looked like a shrunken hat box, throw my phone in it and all my troubles would vanish into thin air and it would cure my ADHD woes.
I spent a good 10 minutes thinking about how in another universe there's a version of me that owns this little cell phone safe and that version of me has probably never seen that ad because his phone is safely locked away (most likely in a competitor's cell phone safe).
I spent another 10 minutes thinking about how if everyone who truly needed a cell phone safe, bought a cell phone safe, then the cell phone safe people would have no way of advertising to people.
They have a product of diminishing returns.
But that's not true at all. They have a cookie jar. You've simply moved the cookies out of the packaging and into the cookie jar, and that has rarely stopped me from eating cookies.
After spending 20 minutes thinking about this cell phone safe I remembered that I was supposed to be working my actual day job and went back to typing numbers into tiny little squares in one of seven excel spreadsheets that I had pulled up on my day job work computer.
Then I started thinking about how people with ADHD have issues with object permanence. Basically, "out of sight, out of mind". This is a big issue for me. In fact, what I said before about a cookie jar rarely preventing me from eating cookies was incorrect.
We had a cookie jar growing up and my mother would often fill it with generic store brand cookies and I would often forget they were in the cookie jar, and the cookies would get soft and soggy, but not in a good way.
I've often inadvertently started farming potatoes by forgetting that I bought a bag of potatoes and only used 2 or 3 out of the bag and then left the bag to live its life in the back of the cupboard.
By this point 45 minutes has passed and I realize that I'm going to have to work extra hard, but only after lunch because now it was lunch time and I hadn't really finished any of my work.
And as I closed my day time work computer and continued to scroll on TikTok I thought to myself, "Cell phone safe, what a crazy idea"
Then I went for an afternoon walk, and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to remember the name of an Earth Wind and Fire song.
I did eventually finish that spreadsheet... eventually.
