Born to Run

I remember the first time that one of my best friends, Anthony Leonelli, told me my favorite joke about a problem we share.

"How many kids with ADD does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

"I don't know, how many?"

"Hey, let's ride bikes."

I swore I'd never be the guy to write anything with the phrase, "You don't understand what it's like to (insert something here)," but today I'm eschewing that pledge in the hopes that I may be able to achieve some sort of catharsis in regards to Attention Deficit Disorder.

It would be pretty easy to make a joke out of all this and sputter around for 300 or so words before going to my pre-written conclusion. I could talk about the 1990 Buffalo Bills, the underrated nature of "Simon Burch," Tom Petty's inclusion in "Silence of the Lambs" and how much I love flavored oatmeal before spewing some half-hearted "Haha, I can barely think straight. Laugh at me," ending.

I did it last year, and immediately regretted it.

ADD is about as weird as it gets, so I guess when it got around to me, it was just kind of fitting. When you go about 18-19 years without ever having to try at anything school-related only to spend three hours trying to sit still long enough to manage a two pager on your favorite author, it raises your parents' eyebrows.

It would be pretty neat and scary if my parents shared eyebrows.

After a myriad of doctor talk, denial and brainstorms of ways to tear my brain from my skull, I reached the statistical part of my trip to Focustown. Anywhere from 2 to 7 percent of adults have ADD and some studies have shown the ratio of men to women who have it to be 2:1. Not only that, but only half of the children who have ADD grow out of it.

Awesome!

I wasn't the only one having trouble buying it. There were some tough times in the Mendola household regarding if I was being lazy, using drugs or not sleeping enough. While the latter turned out to be true in the long run - last year I found out my ADD is partly a product of sleep apnea, something 7 percent of Americans have - I spent more than a year wondering how I became so stupid.

What is it like? Well, for a while, the English language looked like it was composed of Wingdings font in anything that I was reading more complicated than Dr. Seuss's "Oh, The Places You Will Go." Often, it feels like different parts of my brain are all being pulled to the area that deciphers things that confuse me.

All at once.

More often than not, I want to run my head through a wall into another wall composed of multiple walls, coated with battery acid.

Well maybe not the battery acid part, but close to that.

The great news is that there are ways around it. All it takes is a desire to figure out why you haven't been feeling right. Sure, you could end up with a doctor's report that says there is nothing wrong with you and to clean up your room and read a book, but hey, at least you'll know you're a slovenly moron, right?

A solution isn't as simple as gravy on tofurkey, though. Some medicines can alter your personality, a prime reason I've never taken any prescriptions. Not only that, but doctors have been too quick to diagnose the disorder and dole out ritalin lately, a tactic spurned by many experts; behavior therapy, while a much lengthier process, is just as adequate a solution sans drugs.

I feel about 3,501,389 times better today than I did before I started working at becoming a more focused person. Actually, square that number. There still are horrendous days where I want to slide headfirst into a factory-sized cheese grater, but they are far more rare.

Basically, if you are having trouble completing work despite the fact that you honestly tried to get it done all night, it's something to look into. If you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning not because of too much Maker's Mark - although it happens to the best of us - but because you can't even think of anything you have to do that day, it's something to look into. If your manhood is getting in the way of closing your pants, well, I'll tell you the solution to that some other time.

I certainly had some help in writing this from Anthony, a Mendon, Mass. native in his senior year as a history major at Akron. Both of us being college students familiar with the travails of ADD, I asked him the best way to wrap us this column.

"Give me a minute," he said, and after a minute replied:

"I want to start a band called 'The Ted Dancin' Machine.'"