Perpetually Sporadic

As a person with ADHD I often find it difficult to focus on various tasks. Part of my ADHD is that I am NOT an auditory learner. Simplified, that means that I am prone to lose focus if I am merely listening to something; be it a TV show, a lecture, instructions to take the garbage out. In fact, there have been several instances when I cannot even recall a conversation that had just taken place. This lack of focus often carries from one aspect of my life to another.

In addition to my struggle with focus, I also struggle with detail. I am quite the detail oriented person. While most would consider this a good thing, I see it as a constant battle. I see everything, I notice everything. Amongst the things I notice is grammar, namely, poor grammar. It becomes a struggle when noticing poor grammar translates to a need to correct poor grammar. I find myself frequently doing this on facebook and on Twitter where poor grammar runs rampant.

A few weeks ago when I failed in breaking my pattern of staying up late, I came across a tweet from Drew Carey(@DrewFromTV). In that tweet I noticed an error that simply had to be fixed.  So I did what any self-respecting grammar lover did; I tweeted Drew Carey and corrected him.

Not long after I corrected him, I got a response. I know that some “stars” communicate with their followers, but I didn’t expect him to. I was pleasantly surprised to receive his tweet.

@rachelveronica oops er.. Um… "You're tearing me apart Lisa!" – Their. You happy? —
Drew Carey (@DrewFromTV) February 24, 2011

His response, as you can see, was hilarious. I walked away happy that I corrected him and thrilled that he responded. And while it may have been seen as endearing the first time around, I dare not test my luck with a secondary correction. As for the rest of the web, beware….

Back in Fall 2008 I was living in the suburbs of Chicago and taking classes at The Art Institute of Illinois. While I was taking classes I found a job working for Starbucks as a Barista. I love people, so retail is something that I’ve always been good at. Working at Starbucks was no exception. Aside from working for a great company, I loved the aesthetics of the store I worked at. I was always running around with my camera and loved to stop in on my time off and take photos of my fellow Baristas. With great co-workers and a friendly environment, it didn’t take long to feel at home at my Starbucks.

The classes I was taking at The Art Institute were a mix of design, drawing, and photography. While studying there I met a wonderful group of people including a coworker of mine, Michelle. Michelle and I were both older students and immediately bonded. In fact, it was Michelle who suggested me for the job at Starbucks. In addition to being coworkers and fellow students, Michelle and I had an affinity for the absurd that is Charlie the Unicorn & Charlie the Unicorn 2(Now before you go clicking on those links, you should know that those videos are incredibly stupid and highly addictive). Michelle and I would often quote things from the videos in class and at work. This often led to sharing the videos with others who had never heard of it.

Now, when I was working I was often found working the drive thru, greeting people with my friendly voice and serving coffee with my big smile. At Starbucks we had wonderful headsets. When a driver pulled up to the drive thru a chime would inform us of their arrival. There are three buttons that work the headset. The first turns on the speaker so that we can communicate to the person ordering at the drive thru; everyone can hear it. The second button turns off the speaker. The third is held down to communicate with each other. Easy peasy….or not.

One Saturday afternoon I had the pleasure of working with a bunch of my favorite coworkers, including Michelle. Michelle and I were talking on the headsets about Charlie the Unicorn 2. I mentioned that my favorite part was the song towards the end. I was about to describe it to a coworker when I heard a chime. I was, of course, working the drive thru when the customer pulled up. I pressed the first button to turn the speaker on: “Hello, welcome to Starbucks, my name is Rachel what can I get for you today?” Nothing. Thinking they didn’t hear me the first time, which does happen, I repeated my greeting. This time the response was “Hello, we’re going to need a few minutes to decide.” Okay, sure: “Of course, let me know when you’re ready to order or if you have any questions.” With that, I pressed the second button to turn the speaker off and return to my story. I was telling my coworkers about how Charlie was the Banana King. So in the voice of Charlie I repeated “I’m the Banana King?! I am the Banana King!” which was followed by what his companions say in their voices “You’re the Bonana King!”(yes, bonana….check the video). I must have said it a couple times when I heard “we’re ready” through the headset.

I promptly took their order, gave them their total and instructed them to pull up to the window. I opened the window as they approached and repeated their total when they arrived. The woman driving the car smiled at me and asked “So who’s the Banana King?” I must have turned bright red. I didn’t know what to say or do. After a couple seconds I responded “Oh, you heard that…sorry.” My coworkers were standing behind me laughing as they heard the exchange. I took the customer’s money, gave them their order and sent them on their way. As soon as they left I turned to Michelle and my other coworkers and told them that I was CERTAIN that I had turned the speaker off. They just laughed at me and I had no choice but to join them.

One thing is for certain, if I’m around, there is never a dull moment.

Back in November, when I was still at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, I injured my back. It was the week before Thanksgiving and I don’t know how it happened. And despite several trips to the local ER,  my answer never changed.
“Did you fall down the stairs?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Ask me again and I will kick you…”
Now while I didn’t actually threaten to kick the ER Staff, I was certainly tempted to. The pain became so extreme that I was unable to drive my car, a manual. In fact, the Wednesday that the pain became prominent I thought I was going to get into a car accident because I almost couldn’t move my leg in time to push the clutch to shift gears. Literally crippled by the pain, I spent the next couple days at home, laying on my back; trying to rest and get better so that I could return to my classes.

After spending a couple days at home cabin fever started to sink in. It was a Friday night and I knew I needed to do something, anything. I was even willing to endure the pain for the one and a half mile trip to campus. There was only one problem; it was formal night. Most of my friends were heading to formal which was not only pricey, but a whole forty-five minutes away. I knew there was no way I could make it to formal, so I resigned to the fact that I’d have a Friday night at home by myself.

I hopped onto facebook and saw a couple statuses referring to formal. Before I decided to pop a movie in I saw that my friend Greg, with whom plans had recently failed, was not attending formal as he had planned. I grabbed my phone and sent Greg a text asking if he had plans for the evening. As it turned out, he didn’t. I asked if he was up for a game night, or a movie, heck…anything social. He was uncertain at first but after thirty or so minutes of brainstorming we agreed upon a plan to meet on campus, get some ice cream and “see what happens”.

By the time we’d decided what to do, it was nearly 9:30 p.m. I changed clothes, grabbed my keys, and headed to campus. When I arrived I was all too eager to let my Greg take over the driving.  We headed over to the local grocery store, Kroger, for ice cream and a frozen pizza.

After we grabbed our goodies we headed back out to the car. As we approached the car we saw a white pickup with a couple young girls in the bed drive around the parking lot. Greg and I immediately looked at each other and shook our heads. I said something like “This is how accidents happen” and he replied with a similar statement. We kinda laughed at ourselves realizing we sounded….old. I opened the door to the car and took one last look as the truck rounded the bend and started to drive away. Both girls got to their knees, threw their hands in the air and shouted. Then almost simultaneously, one of the girls stood up and threw her fist in the air as the driver swerved hard.

It happened so quickly that I didn’t even close the door to the car. My phone was in my hand, and I was running towards the girl crumpled on the road. Oh my God, she’s dead. The million thoughts in my head were interrupted by a voice; for a brief moment I had forgotten about the phone. I somehow managed to tell the 911 operator about the girl that had fallen out of the bed of a moving truck. I gave her our exact location and told her we’d stay with the girl until paramedics and police arrived. It was as if time slowed as I drew closer to the body laying motionless on the pavement. When she was finally in front of me my heart skipped a beat as I saw her look at me.

She smiled. I stared at her.

As if prompted she said “I know that I’m not supposed to move anything, just in case, so I stayed like this”. Greg, who was right behind me, knelt down in front of the girl and moved his hands in front of her eyes and asked her questions in an effort to rule out a concussion. While I didn’t remember the specifics of the physical appearance of a concussion, I knew that asking simple questions could help determine if there was indeed a concussion.

“Who’s the president?” I asked. “Obama” She easily replied. “Who was president before him?” I went on. She smiled and said “George Bush”. “And before him?” I asked. “I have no idea” she responded, almost giggling. Her friends that had since joined us standing in the middle of the empty road chimed in with “We don’t even know and we didn’t fall.”  I looked at all of them and said “You all need to start paying more attention in history class…remember Bill Clinton?” A myriad of replies made me sigh. I asked her what, if anything hurt. She said that she felt fine, but her ankle was hurting. I asked is she could wiggle her toes and move her hands and she obliged.

Little by little the relief came. It seemed that this girl was going to be alright. As we stood with her, waiting for the paramedics, I asked her questions to help keep her mind occupied. I asked her where she went to school, what she liked to do, and a host of other questions. She told me that she was a Junior at the local Catholic high school and that her friends there went to school with her. As I talked to her, the adrenaline must have started to wear off because she started to cry. Seeing that she was upset, I did my best to calm her. I told her that it was an accident and that she was very lucky that she going to be alright. Which reminded me….I looked up at the boys at sternly said “You all better go to Mass on Sunday and thank Jesus that she’s alive”.

The cops arrived before the paramedics. When they pulled into the parking lot I overheard the boys say something about lying to the cops. I walked over to them and told them it was NEVER a good idea to lie to the police…and that I planned on telling the police the truth. Not long after the cops arrived an ambulance pulled in. As the paramedics tended to the girl the police asked if anyone had called her parents. The boys looked at each other and knew that one of them was going to have to make that call.

Greg and I didn’t stay to see who, but I can imagine how that went over. As we slipped away from the scene I thanked God that the girl was alive and thought back to my high school days. Was I ever that stupid? I sure hope not.

A few years ago I moved to Chicago, just because. While I was looking for an apartment I stayed with my amazing grandmother.  At the time she was 83 and vivacious as ever, as seen in this photo.

While she was active, one of the tasks she could no longer complete was taking the dog for a walk. Her house had a nice back yard, so the dogs didn’t need to be walked much. Long gone were the days of trips to the park with the dogs.

When I moved in with her only one of the four dogs was left, my Charlie. While he lived with her since 1998, when my family moved to New Jersey, he was still “my” Charlie. The November before we moved to New Jersey I found him walking around the condo complex. I had just come home from school and there was snow on the ground. He was so tiny. He had no collar and I worried that he’d wander into the street. I took him inside and waited until my mom came home to tell her of my find. The last thing she needed was the added expense of a dog. With some petitioning I was able to reach an agreement with her. She would call the local police departments everyday for a week, if by the end of the week no one had filed about a missing dog, we could keep him. Lucky for me, a week went by with no leads on his owners. Charlie could stay!

Almost ten years later he was incredibly attached to my grandmother. But I noticed the little bits of love he showed me throughout the days. I loved taking him out for walks; I think they weren’t so much for my little man as they were for me. I just loved spending time with him. He was so tiny that when I was crossing a busy street I’d pick him up and run across knowing his little old legs just couldn’t keep up anymore.

I would always take Charlie to the same park. It was across the street and a couple blocks down. Sometimes there were kids playing on the playground and kids playing soccer on the field. Sometimes it was empty and the two of us had the run of the place.

One day when I was taking Charlie for a walk I saw a man was sitting on a bench watching his young daughter play in the sand box. As we drew nearer, the man saw us and pointed out Charlie to the little girl “Look sweetie, a little dog.”  I smiled, trying to show that we were friendly and came in peace. The little girl looked up from the sandbox at Charlie, then at her father and without skipping a beat replied “That’s not a dog! That’s a rat!” The man chuckled and I somehow managed to keep from replying, but quickly whispered “Don’t listen to her, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about” to my little man.

There are so many wonderful memories I have of Charlie. Sadly, we lost him about two years ago. My little man was old, and it was his time to go. At this point and time I had an apt that was 30 minutes away from my grandmother’s house. One Friday night I decided to go visit her. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay long, but I just had this feeling that I should visit. When I arrived Charlie didn’t come to greet me as he normally did. I went upstairs to say hello and saw Charlie laying in an afghan on my bed. He barely moved when he saw me. My grandmother told me he had been like that since the day before. I sat on the bed and talked to him and my grandmother. When I left, I told her I’d most likely stop by the next day.

When I got the call from her it was about 9am Saturday morning and I was at a friend’s house. I had stopped by for a book and was at the door saying goodbye when I got the phone call. Poor Billy didn’t know what to do. I looked at him as I clumsily repeated the words my grandmother was saying. The tears welled up and started to stream down my face before I knew what was happening. When the call ended I looked at him and tried to speak, but sobbing replaced my words. He ushered me back inside, got me some tissues and a glass of water. He sat on the couch across from me, looking at me. When I found my words I told him what my grandmother had said. Charlie was in really bad condition. They knew he wouldn’t make it through the day, so they took him to the vet to be “put down”. I had asked her to wait for me, so I could say goodbye, but she didn’t want me to experience that sadness. I know she did it out of love. When I had calmed down and the crying had decreased I thanked Billy for his kindness and I headed back to my apartment.

I may not have been there to say one last goodbye to my little man, but I was at least able to spend some time with him the night before. I am so grateful for all the time I was able to spend with him. I know my little man is where he deserves to be, after all, all dogs go to heaven.