ADHD memes

I'm 41 now. But I can remember being 14 in 9th grade. And I was sitting next to a window in math class. The teacher was writing on the board a math equation and explaining how to solve it. I was looking out the window.

After 5 minutes of explaining the concepts of how to solve it, he noticed I hadn't looked at the board once.

He decided to try to publicly humiliate me by asking me to solve, with the idea being I hadn't been paying attention. So when he asked someone to solve, and then called my name, without even glancing at the board once, I said "52". He was taken back, because it wasn't even a moment of hesitation. I didn't even glance once at the board.

He thought I was somehow cheating, and got angry. He yelled "How could you possibly know that??? Is someone outside that window helping you???" And comes to look out the window.

So me, being a sarcastic, and now insulted teenager said "Yeah. I got a got man on the inside who's bugged the room, running special ops surveillance of your teaching agenda. He's using flag signals to feed me the answers. And when it's time for gym class, you should see how he's going to help me cheat running laps. It's pretty elaborate. He works with the CIA."

He storms over and sticks his head out the window. I THOUGHT it was implied that I was calling him an idiot for suggesting I was somehow cheating by looking outside. What he was looking for, I have no idea. Every student was losing their shit because they all got the joke. Somehow the teacher was on something else. Then he closes the window shades.

So he makes me stay for detention and calls my dad to school after the school day is over. School lets out at 2:30. My dad doesn't leave work until 3pm. Which means he doesn't get to my school until about 3:30. This whole time, him waiting an hour, furiously twitching waiting for my dad to get there. My dad walks in, and before he cal even say a word, not even hello, my teacher is like a chicken clucking it's head off.

"MR (last name), YOUR SON IS BEING VERY DISRUPTIVE IN MY CLASS TODAY!!! DO YOU KNOW WHAT HE DID? DO YOOOUUU KNOOOWWW WHAT HE DIIIIIID????"

Keep in mind, it was the late 90s. Cell phones existed, but not even most adults had them yet. And no kids had them. So there would be no feasible way for me to contact a factory worker during the work day, or the drive over. It should have been well understood that I'd have not had contact with him.

And my dad was already annoyed by his tone. He says "Well sure I know what he did. I just got here, you haven't told me anything, why WOULDN'T I know what's going on?"

And that just pissed off my teacher more. He says "EARLIER TODAY I WAS TEACHING CLASS, AND I WROTE A FORMULA OUT IN CLASS!!! YOUR SON DIDN'T EVEN LOOK!!! THEN HE JUST LUCKY GUESSED AND GOT IT RIGHT!!! HE WAS LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW, AND SAID CIA AGENTS WERE HELPING HIM IN GYM CLASS!!! I HAD TO CLOSE THE BLINDS!!!"

So my dad, knowing I had to focus on multiple things at once, just said "What were you looking at?" And I said "a cat". And he says "and did you guess his math equation?" I said "No. He explained the concept for five minutes. I understood the answer in 30 seconds. Then I was bored for 4 and a half minutes."

Teacher is now back on his bullshit. He writes another, different problem on the board, using the same concepts. He asks me to solve.

So I go up to the board. What he didn't know was I went to the computer lab instead of lunch. I wrote down this long elaborate calculus problem. Then spent the rest of the day memorising it. Not how to solve it. Just how to write it down. And what the answer was. It's like an actor reciting lines about topics they have no clue about. They'll sound right, because they are, but they as an individual will have no idea why.

So he's just written down that similiar algebra problem. And I walk right past him, and start writing this beast out on the board next to it. I'm just writing from memory, and all the while secretly glancing at his board to solve in my head. I almost screwed up the memorization for a moment, because I was trying to do too much, but they didn't notice.

So now I've written this long piece of shit math out, far beyond a 9th grade level, probably on a masters degree level. Then walked over to his math problem and write "22" as the answer.

Then I said "I've solved your equation. Can you solve mine?"

And he just stared and stared and stared. And eventually said "Mr (last name), I'm sorry to have wasted your time."

On my way out I wrote "48" under my memorized math problem. So that if he tried to solve it later, even if he fot help to do so, and got the right answer he'd see I already got it long before him.

On the way home my dad said "you have no idea what the answer was to the long math you wrote out, do you?" I said "I wrote 48." And he said "ok, but you have no idea how to solve that on your own, do you?" And I said "Nope."

Hard relate. It really sucks and "active listening skills" do help a lot but it's no substitute for just... Being able to follow along without incredible amounts of effort.

I feel like sometimes I get grace by brushing it off as "sorry I spaced out what did you say about XYZ?" but that only goes so far.

This is why we invented the word "hello". It means a conversation is about to start and it's time to pay attention. When you initiate a conversation, you're supposed to wait for the other person to say hello back, to indicate they're ready to pay attention. If your friends don't say hello and wait for you to say hello back, they're using bad manners and it's their fault you weren't paying attention. Drag thinks this is an easy problem. "Hey buddy, you forgot to wait for me to say hi back. I missed the first five seconds of whatever you said and don't understand the rest. Let's try again. Hello, I am listening now."

Language is actually pretty awesome and has built in accommodations for many disability use cases. You just have to understand how language is your ally, and educate those around you.

It's school dependent even in US suburbia. The middle school near me regularly ignores IEP and 503 but the high school goes above and beyond and not only abides, but adlibs, finds things that help and circles back regularly.