For a long time now the media has harped on the horrors of Attention Deficit Disorder. But due to all this hype A.D.D.’s cousin has escaped the limelight. Yes folks, Attention Surplus Disorder is alive and well and affecting our fragile youth in startling numbers. Unfortunately, our faithful babysitter the television (whatsoever did our grandparents do without the magic box?) has not proven enough to curb this growing pandemic. We have hundreds of channels, pay-per-view movies, even the internet jungle of click and change, still our children pay attention.
I realized the depth of this problem the first time I corrected a teacher in class. She said, “Put your head down dear, take a nap.” And she was right. I needed that extra sleep to help lose perspective.
All throughout my formative school years my trouble’s increased. In first grade, one of our assignments was to cut simple shapes from construction paper, circle, square, triangle, etc. Obsessed with pi and the perfect right angle I cut and recut those shapes under the tightest of scientific scrutiny. I was left with paper shapes that could fit on my pinky and were almost up to my exacting standards. The teacher just shook her head at me while the rest of the class mewed triumphantly with their burry edged but proper sized shapes. Those smug bastards.
Learning decimals in the fifth grade I was confounded when the teacher instructed three decimal places were exact enough. I tried to come to grips with this arbitrary distinction but it felt more wrong than any irrational number. In the allotted time I solved three problems while in the process consuming forty pages of notebook paper. Considering I had eight problems left to go, I discovered yet again that my attention had gotten the better of me.
In junior high geography class my project consisted of reproducing the globe. Using NASA satellite pictures and ground surveys obtained from various world governments I designed a perfectly proportioned globe. I even made the earth nonspherical. Perplexed by the spatial shifting the teacher could only glower at the pitifully sized United States. She called me unpatriotic and said, “No way in God’s green earth do the Canucks claim that much space. The Lord just wouldn’t have designed it that way.” I accumulated another mark on my already blackened record.
In high school, the particle accelerator I designed in metal shop didn’t go over well because in all my adroit concentration I had forgotten to paint it blue.
For the A.S.D. child the world is a bleak place. No longer shielded from the harsh banality of everyday living, they experience life in full focus. Untreated they will grow from overinterested and dynamic youths to cynical and dysfunctional adults who vote for Ralph Nader.
The insidious progression of A.S.D. has even more tragic outcomes. According to the medical establishment I affectionately refer to as “the man” the long-term effects of A.D.D. are “school failure, school drop-out, delinquency, criminal behavior”. Sure, that’s bad. But is it anything compared to the A.S.D. child’s fate? For them they’ll be afflicted by isolation due to success, sycophants who befriend them for their power and wealth, a profound realization of the hypocrisy of a social system that creates criminals and then imprisons them, and worst of all, they’ll read.
Perhaps you, the reader of this column, suffer from this tragic malady and may not even know it. To discover if you have A.S.D. you need only take this simple test as follows. Have you read this far into the column? Yes, I’m afraid your fears are justified. You are indeed suffering from the A.S.D. beast. But there’s help.
Treatments are already emerging for this disconcerting disorder. Desperate parents of precocious prodigies need only visit their doctor and local pharmacy. A cornucopia of stupor inducing bliss awaits. Valium, sleeping pills, quaaludes, belladonna, cyanide.
Doctor Thadius McFlingle is also hard at work with his controversial but, by parents’ testimony, successful treatment. Known as the “Blitzkrieg Protocol” his inspired method calls for constant upheaval to the burgeoning child’s sense of order. The first step begins with the child’s everyday necessities. Move things around. Change topics in conversation quickly and randomly. Buy a Harley and leave it running at all hours of the night. Install an outhouse. Dress up like an alien and pretend to abduct him (leave the anal probe to a trained medical professional). Force him to wear bellbottoms and listen to Phish. Divorce your spouse and openly blame him as the cause.
In more dire cases, perhaps your A.S.D. child has already begun to develop abstract thought. McFlingle advises this can best be addressed with a little spiritual attrition. Perhaps convert to Judaism, then Buddhism, then Catholicism, after that become a Zoroastrian before downgrading to an atheist. The child’s spiritual identity and metaphysical views will be so confounded he’ll never even want to consider the possibility of anything beyond the physical. Which works out because you settled on atheism. Plus, what can be more comforting than not having an eternal soul and therefore being beyond reproach?
Some might think this invasive treatment will irreparably psychologically damage the child. But McFlingle comforts with the appropriate authoritarian panache, “They’ll get over it. I did.” And really could the possible side effects be any worse than the A.S.D. existence? For more information visit his website at http://www.areyoufuckingkiddingme.com.
For me the path to recovery did not allow drugs as an option. I was afraid the pills would put me in a perpetual state of slow motion. My exact problem was the world moving too slow so I couldn’t have that. Hence, I resorted to behavioral therapy. As an adult, already deeply afflicted, the process proved quite different than for my more fortunate younger counterparts. The treatments included: being hurled from a bus in a burlap sack, a cross-country rampage with the Marvin Way Twirlers (a tribute band to the Bay City Rollers), and an intimate encounter with Peter. When all that failed they forced me to participate in the new Hollywood Squares. I sat right beneath Whoopi Goldberg with Fran Drescher on my one side and the kid who played Urkel on my other. That set me straight.
Fully recovered, I returned to the sleeping world. I considered working at Starbucks but the horrors of the cognitive process required to make change seemed too overwhelming. Sure the machine tells you the exact amount to give back to the customer. But you have to struggle with the decision between quarters, dimes, nickels, pennies. That’s if you’re lucky. With every customer comes the dastardly possibility of a besmirching fifty-cent piece or the malefic gold dollar.
Thankfully I landed a primo position working for Anderson Industrial Waste Security keeping our nation’s radiation safe. For the first time in my life I can say, in complete rapture, I don’t have to think, not at all.