The White Rabbit Syndrome

Remember the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland? Most people associate it with the Matrix as in leaving one reality and experiencing another. But I always identified with the White Rabbit, who kept pulling a pocket watch out of his waistcoat pocket and muttering… “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!” In the Disney animated version, he even had a theme song, which reverberates in my brain every time I’m rushing to get somewhere…

I’m late, I’m late,
For a very important date.
No time to say “hello…goodbye!”
I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!

Having ADD is like showing up late for a party and everyone has gone home. You always feel like you’ve missed something. You usually have since you always show up late for work, appointments, your grandmother’s 100th birthday party. You’re a social liability since you always catch the end of other people’s conversations and have to ask “What was that?” since you’re busy with the other part of your brain wondering what is on TV tonight, how much money you’ve got in your checking account and did you turn the coffee pot off when you left the house?

I worked in an office where there were about eight cubicle that served three different departments. My cubicle was apparently the one with the best acoustics, because I could hear every conversation that went on in the room. The two co-workers whose cubicles directly joined mine would have conversations on the phone and I could hear every word, unless they whispered, which was seldom. People would visit other people in their cubicle and have conversations that I of course couldn’t help but hear. When I would join in from the other side with a bit of information I thought would be helpful, they would respond as if I had no right to eavesdrop. Hey, if I can hear it comfortably without sneaking up on someone, I don’t consider it eavesdropping. Maybe that’s some deficit in my social upbringing. Maybe it’s part of my disorder that I feel I need to butt in on other people’s conversation.

The upside is you can multitask like nobody’s business. Do you need someone to answer the phone, fill out forms, wait on customers, go make copies, and file paperwork all in the space of an hour? I’m the one you want. But don’t expect me to show up five minutes early everyday, more like 2-5 minutes late. And don’t expect me to sit at my desk all day on the days I’m having trouble focusing. Oh, and if someone’s having and interesting conversation in the cubicle next to me? That’s probably where you’ll find me for the next hour or so. Yet, if you want someone to work two hours overtime to get out that report that has to be on the boss’s desk first thing in the morning, I can stay focused for hours at a time.

But not today, thank you. Today, I spent an hour on the Internet reading articles about ADD before I realized an hour had passed. How ironic is that?

My favorite thing about ADD is being able to bounce around to10 different subjects in the space of a couple hours. Have you ever had a phone conversation where you started out talking about your cousin getting married and ended up talking about whether there really are UFO’s? As you hang up the phone, you wonder how the heck the conversation got turned in that direction. Sometimes you sit there and back track and try to figure out how it happened. Imagine that happening for 12 hours a day, 20 if you’re sleep deprived. That’s what it’s like to have ADD.

My favorite description is by Ellen Degeneres. It went something like this…

Maybe I have ADD. I should go get tested. I’ll have to call the doctor and be put on hold for 20 minutes to make the appointment, then wait a week for the appointment. Then I’ll drive down there, have to look for a parking space, sit in his office for a couple of hours, and then take the test. I don’t have the patience for that, I must have ADD!