Laws of Dealing with AD/HD People

This text has spread over the internets from a Facebook group The ADD and ADHD Law. I did some editing and present only general and funny laws.

1. Law of Interruption: When a non-ADD/HD person is speaking is interrupted by an ADD/HD person, you cannot be offended. Understand that it is not because what you are saying is boring, but the said ADD person had a whim.
2. Law of Randomness: Non-ADD/HD people shouldn't look at an ADD/HD person when they make a comment that's out of the blue as if they are alien. If said ADD/HD person wants to say a random fact about coffee when you're talking about the zoo, just smile!
3. Law of Extreme Moods: For extreme ADD/HD off medication, understand there isn't any moderation in their mood. They are either hyper or tired.
4. Law of Silence: If said ADD/HD person is tired, do not bother them. Enjoy the silence because chances are it won't last long.
5. Law of Patience/Impatience: If you are the friend of a person with mild-extreme ADD/HD, you understand one quality you have to have is patient.
   On the part of the person with ADD/HD, they maybe impatient at times (especially if they are hungry, but they are not to be rude about it). If the said ADD/HD person goes to extreme tempers in public, their friend (patient) does have the right to leave or give a gentle slap on the back.
6. Law on Love: Most of the time, ADD/HD people have a lot of love for their friends, family, and significant other. They have different methods of showing it. If you are confused by a certain event that is clearly not a negative one, understand that it's their way of saying you are wonderful.
7. Law of Movement: A) When an ADD person twitches or swings their hands around when they speak, know they are not deaf. Do not try their sign language because you will hurt your own mind. B) When the ADD person is speaking with their hands, don't imitate them because they will be confused even more. This confusion can cause brain damage to said person.
8. Law of Drugs: When an ADD/HD person is taking their Adderol know that they are not drug dealers. Trying to take their medication will result in your ass being kicked by said person. Now if the ADD/HD person offers to share, that is between the two of you. The ADD/HD law does not take responsibility of those who turn into lunatics with ADD/HD peoples!
9. Law of Medicated Concentration: When a person with ADD/HD takes their medication and is hard at work, do not poke or prod, or make fun of said person for their intense concentration. If this law is ignored you can expect an angry/panicked reaction from said person.
10. Law of Boredom: If you as the friend suggest something to do keep in mind if ADD/HD friend isn't on their medication they will be bored in less than 10 minutes unless it deals with something of extreme interest or pays good money. Examples would be ice cream or anything with sugar.
11. Law of All Over the Place: A non ADD/HD person may run into their ADD/HD friend more than twice within the time span of an hour at different places on campus. Do not be afraid because they do not know how to teleport. But, it is normal since ADD/HD people just like to be "all over the place" and keep themselves busily entertained to avoid boredom (aka studying or doing homework).
12. Law of Piles and Cleaning - Never mess with piles or attempt to clean a ADD/HD persons room because no matter how messy it may be! Those pile are the person's "filing cabinet" or closet, and it is very clean and organized to them and they know where every thing is. Cleaning there room or even worse organizing it will only cause them confusing and they will more than likely to hurt you physically.
13. Law of Erratic Eyes: Do not be alarmed if you are in conversation with an ADD/HDer and he or she does not make solid eye contact, but instead glances around constantly as if he only recently survived a zombie attack that he expects to be repeated at any moment. He was not necessarily abused as a child, is not necessarily untrustworthy, and does not necessarily think you are boring and/or unattractive. Nor does it mean you should brace for attack from the rear, turn around to see what the hell he is looking at, or ask if you have something on your face, as this will only distract him. It is just that for an ADD/HDer, looking at one fixed point for any length of time at all is as almost as difficult as chewing gum while laying eggs and levitating. If he or she is standing or sitting in one place to talk to you (or walking around in your general location and picking up random objects to examine while talking to you), accept this as a signal that if he were ADD/HD-free, he would be boring a hole through your eyeballs and into your brain with the weight of his gaze alone, putting you at severe risk for brain hemorrhage.

    • Corollary: If an ADD/HDer stares you in the eye for more than .7 seconds, and you are not incredibly attractive or incredibly unattractive, you should probably run.
    • Second Corollary: If he screams, "Look out!" and points to something behind you, be thankful he has ADD/HD and wasn't staring you in the eye. But do it after you have gotten your ass to relative safety, because something bad is about to happen to the back of you.
14. Law of 'Special School': If an ADD/HD person is at a 'special school', understand that they are not stupid (in fact most ADD/HD people are very smart, they may seem to be stupid.  They are there because of the fact that they/we learn differently!

Conservative Adventures of a Curious Mind - The Beginning

The biggest issue with my ADHD is that no matter how busy and tied up in things I am, I will always find something more interesting and more exciting than the current task leaving it behind. Now, in the midst of midterms, I am slowly getting myself into a debate over satirical "anti-Muslim" posters, which have been distributed on GWU campus on October 8.

I will not get into the details of the issue since anyone can just search for "anti-Muslim posters GWU" (without the quotes) on one's favorite search engine. I would rather explain why I am getting involved. The reason is simple: I do not want anyone to come for me, but if they do, I want someone to be left to speak out. I am not pro-Muslim for it has been misinterpreted as many times as Christianity has been; I am not anti-Israeli for I am a moderate Zionist; I am not anti-American for I truly support America in struggle against Russia and Iran; but I am a sane rational person who hates zealotry and bigotry. Hence, I will take on anyone who is willing to challenge my views on the limits of satire, hate speech, or even my biases.

This being said, I am going back to my boring schoolwork, which is now somewhat spiced up.

Obsessions

I have never realized how typical AD/HD I was until just recently. A person posted about her peculiarity of getting obsessed with activities, spending lots of money on it, and then giving it up. She asked whether it was just her, or it was something normal among AD/HD people. Many, including myself, responded that they have the same peculiarity. However, I noticed that my obsessions are slightly different from those who responded. I do get obsessed with ideas and activities, but I spend a lot of time rather than money on them.

Looking back at my childhood and adolescence, most of my obsessions have rarely been material. Thanks to my parents who taught me how to question desires of buying something. Yet, I have always been obsessed with information and knowledge for as long as I can remember myself. The only thing that changed was the subject and the area of that knowledge. I read anything that contained knowledge for as long as I could comprehend it (SI tables were among the shortest reads in my life). There was not a single encyclopedia, a dictionary, or a reference book that was in our home that remained untouched by the time I reached about 10 years. The primary victims were books that explained how things worked, described how places and frontiers (including the cosmos) were explored, and general history (though I never got into any particular subject of history). The only fiction books I read in childhood on my own (i.e. not assigned in school) were from Alfred Szklarski's series about Tomek Wilmowski, which still fell under the category of exploration because while the characters were fictional, their travels and footnotes to the books were extremely historically and scientifically accurate.

Encyclopedias allowed me to harvest them for wisdom in no particular order. I could open a random page, look for a particular topic, or even scan indices until something caught my eye. There were times when I read just the footnotes of Szklarski's books getting way ahead of the story. As a result, I got spoiled for life. I now cannot read a textbook because explanations are much longer than reference articles I am used to. I get bored with fiction because development of characters takes away from action. At the same time, there is Wikipedia to save me. I accidentally found out that most of the topics in social sciences and some other subjects are covered very well there. Even though professors advise against it because of doubts of quality, I am no fool and cross-check articles during lectures. In addition, Wikipedia satisfies my thirst for knowledge because it contains significantly more factual information than textbooks and hyperlinks allow for instant explanations of unknown terms.

However, there is one passionate obsession of mine that I carried over the years and that still haunts me. It is nothing but writing. There is no better example of how I enthusiastically start things just to give them up later. I clearly remember one "project" that I undertook, but never got back to it even though the notebook has always been nearby waiting to be continued. There might have been other things I tried to write, but I do not recall anything major except for that one. However, I remember how much pain it was to write a composition about "my sports" or "my past time" because there was not much besides reading, but I always had a lot to write when it came to "my travels" or "people I admire" making my teachers wonder how I could remember so many details or how I knew about some historical figure.

I realized that writing was one of my things only after I had started blogging. At first, I thought that a blog would be a convenient way to tell all my old friends (who now live all over the world) about my life. I later realized that since other people read my blog, I could use it as a soapbox and spread the "evil seed" of my brain onto the masses. The format proved to be comfortable for my brain full of racing thoughts. Each entry has its own topic and neighboring entries do not need to be even closely related. My erratic mind, which has so much to tell the world, cannot find a better way to express itself. Unfortunately, nothing protects me from posting things I regret later on or leaving unfinished drafts. In fact, this blog is not even a month old and I already have two unfinished entries, which I intend to publish eventually. Yet, it is not as bad as my laptop's hard drive, which houses a couple dozen drafts of letters, articles, plans, papers, and other forms of writing that had never made it to the intended audience. Time spent composing them is probably close to at least a week. Of course, it is nothing comparing to some other lost investments, but it makes me sad that so many great ideas will never see the world because I could not stay focused at the time when they were relevant. May be one day, when I become rich and famous, I will publish "the unpublished works". Until then, they will be wherever I take my laptop.

P.S. I wrote this entry in two attempts each lasting about 90 minutes over a course of over six hours.