Stand Still, Laddie! by Garrett Sax
Friday, February 9th, 2007Filed under: Themes, The Attention Defistress
STAND STILL, LADDIE!
by Garrett Sax
I could never really do it. I just couldn’t. Sit still, that is. I guess that’s why Pink Floyd’s album The Wall had such a big impact on me. (For those not familiar with the album, its anthems follow a storyline, and portray the fictional life of an agonized antihero named Pink, who’s smothered and oppressed by society, and who’s building an imaginary wall around him, brick by brick and song by song.) Hearing it as I did, at the peak of the problem when I was in grade six, I related to Pink’s tortured classroom experiences. I suppose countless kids did, but with me the chord it struck was deeply personal. I was prone to distraction and, thus, to procrastination on a grand scale. I constantly had to stretch my legs, or shrug my shoulders, or crack my knuckles. My eyes had explored every nook and cranny of every classroom a million times over. I had a variety of facial twitches, that were not entirely involuntary but seemed to relieve me of some bug. I talked too much, could never simply shut the fuck up. When I was a kid, I would always be the one with the extra essay to write on “Why I should keep quiet and not disrupt the class.” I would fidget nervously in my hard wooden chair, fiddling any object within reach, constantly suffering the disciplinary punishments of teachers caught between the old, hard-knock pedagogy and the newer, kinder, gentler one. I was desperate for the end of classes, perhaps not unlike the other kids-but they seemed better able to endure their suffering patiently. I longed to hear the tolling of the freedom bell. I daydreamed ceaselessly, exploring a variety of imaginary worlds whose common thread had me as the adored hero of whatever situation, the “King of Cool.” But the truth was the complete opposite.
Most puzzling was that I always had the highest marks, which runs somewhat counter to the literature. I was supposed to suffer academically because of my “problem.” Instead, I suffered from bullying-the negative attention garnered by my good grades. I wasn’t the only disruptive kid in my school, but I sure as hell drew the most ire. I was reviled as a pariah, a fact that had a profound effect on my ability to develop a healthy sense of self. My happiest days as a kid were when I was alone, swaying in the trees behind my house, exploring our village on my bike, and other solitary activities. I had friends, but relationships were always difficult to maintain steadily. It took me a long while to understand the rules of social etiquette and my role in maintaining the thin veneer of acceptability and amiable cohesion.
The backdrop of all this was the dysfunctional relationship between my violently alcoholic father and my domineering, control-freak mother (again relating me to The Wall). This fact of our lives – the dysfunction that continues to this day – was certainly never brought up in the collusion of the parental, medical, and educational authorities who hovered over me to impose a pharmaceutical solution. No oneever asked me what I wanted, which was a good thing too, I guess, because in my terrified silence I might have become complicit in the plot. I was prescribed the usual medication: because I had the problem Ihad to take the little pill. My mother swears to this day that this is the reason I got good grades. She still has the overwhelming need to justify her actions by remembering them in the most positive light, whitewashing the truth. She didn’t know I kept the pills under my tongue and spit them out later. I got into just as much trouble as before, but we all brushed the rest under the rug of denial: plenty of toys at Christmas to forget what a rotten family we were.
But hyperactivity doesn’t end with childhood. Later on I served in the military which, as you can surely imagine, was quite a challenge given the amount of social control and individual responsibility for self-control that are inherent in the life of a soldier. I found a way to use humour to my advantage, winning allies through the alleviation of collective boredom, and finding my way to niche positions where I could work alone and with little supervision. I wasn’t any good at working with groups, as my energy levels and a lack of patience wouldn’t allow me to comfortably work with others. No one knew what my problem was, nor really cared. The military life is a strange one and is full of paradox. One oddity of the experience is that there is an interesting inclusion and solidarity by virtue of shared membership. All sorts of bizarre characters seemed less so because of our unique context. I thought I was an oddball, but some of the people I met in the army…well…I was just glad there was an army for them to be in.
Now I hold a steady job and have a small family. I live within the same limitations I always have: on the joyous side, I have learned that kids generally love hyperactive adults. We have the same energy bursts, the same need to burn it through motion and laughter. But although I found my voice and my self, and successfully overcame what previously seemed like giant hurdles, I still have my nervous fidget, my inability to sit still for long periods. When I am running errands, either at the office or on the streets of my neighbourhood, I frequently break out into a jog as if what I was doing had the urgency of an immovable deadline, when it might have been no more than going to the fax machine to send off a report or going to the store to get some milk. A burst of adrenaline rushes through me and overwhelms me with the need to move quickly. Some people at work hate me because of it, for all the averted collisions that make them stiffen up when they hear my quickened pace around the bend of the corridor.
Everybody else loves me. I’m “the funny guy.” I love to make people laugh, to be responsible for their good humour. It’s my way of gaining social acceptance on the one hand, and burning my excesses of energy on the other. People marvel at my comedic wit as I jump off one idea and into the next, exploiting whatever comic potential is afforded by absurdity and wordplay. I fly off on tangents (from a partial inability to control them!). But I damn well function. I pay my taxes on time, and put the trash out on the curb on the correct day. It’s not always easy, and there is not much room within my social spaces to come out and speak directly about life with “hyperactivity disorder,” but being the funny guy gives me the liberty to blurt things out, and make jokes at my own expense (and have no one the wiser, kind of like my bipolar friend who openly jokes about the heavy-duty medications she carries in her purse…and no one believes her!).
These are the survival strategies you pick up along the way, as you try to stake out a meaningful existence in a meaningless world.
If you are still curious about me, and piqued to know more, be so kind as to visit The Potanical Garden. A rather BIG clue lies therein…
