First Enchanted: Break the rules

There’s not a single headline in this august 2008. There is no exciting new world-changing discovery in the molecular world. No greater discovery will shake the foundations of the universe. There is no new istemppture to hold our notice as we approach the hour of the blind marching toward the 12.30pm super-black hole.
There is only bad news.
One malady, somewhat awkwardly and against the grain of the usually good news, is the something worse than climate change. This phantom disease has been streaking through the lives of teenagers all over the world for almost three years, a disease known as the ADHD minefield, incipient army of teenage males who are so obsessively absorbed with the slivers of their lives and the awareness of that world that they have been reported to forget to wear their pants. Many of them act as if they are the cat in the people-watching game. Only rarely do you see one of these boys looking out of a window, smiling, or drinking a pitcher of cherry Crush, tapping his feet and randomly tossing a guitar case or the bottom of a bag. I have never seen one of these boys looking even remotely like Andy Rooney. He owns his time and its meaning.
From the early 21st century on, it seemed as if the focus of each day’s news was parents throwing their kids out of the house. The question should be, what took them so long? Shouldn’t these parents have realized that they had made a bad choice a long time ago, that they had fucked the pooch and then cursed them in public. And then maybe they should have realized that their decision to throw away the sin bin of parent ethics, puppy rescue, and separation from their children, no matter what happens or how unbearable the loss of the fact that their children are no longer with them in the flesh, was not the right thing to do. The ADHD dumpster is a physical safety hazard, but let’s not get carried away, and make the land quiver, lest we imagine how easily this can happen to our most precious wives. Here in Redwood City, everyone I’ve told about ADHD’s danger has rolled their eyes. “See, there they are right there!” the 60-year-old saying mother said. But they do exist! These are not all kids in schools or at college. They are right here in the community, where every adult in the town can see them at meal time or any social gathering. One man told me that he and his friends recently went into his local Stop ‘n Shop and saw a teenager as old as 16 hiding under a pile of cereal boxes as young people walked by, picking their pant legs as they went. If not for the sight of this boy, no one would know he was there. He was totally gone.
Here, and all over America, there are ADD children, a societal plague that seems beyond the reach of the average caring, caring person. There are cities with more adults who are diagnosed with ADHD than cities with younger kids. I am curious. Are we so squeamish about our own stuff we can’t grasp it, or is it us that is really sick in the head? Is it that our parents failed to plant in us the seeds of acceptance? Or was it us? Both. That fear that springs from doubt is the lifeblood of our country. Any competent politician could take the lead in recognizing ADHD’s presence and encourage us to recognize that the game of perfecting ourselves will never work. As civilization progresses, more and more of us will move into this new realm, the Alzheimer’s of the mind, and in it will launch itself into a war of the brain. We need love now more than ever. We need people to come over and hug us like we never hugged them before. Someone to show us their mommy chair, tell us to watch the birds, teach us to pray. Someone to tell us our parents are not the only ones who can’t read. But more than that, we need family, friends, neighbors, bosses, and employers to realize that at this time in our history, we all need to work together, even though we think that’s impossible.
Don’t you have enough on your plate?
Stop complaining and start helping,
Emily Ron