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2002-05-13 | 1:15 p.m.

I've been reading about attention deficit disorder for six days and I think it's going to stick. I expect to be formally diagnosed with it and then, I hope, will get an answer to the question that's currently on my mind: Okay, so what now? I want to tell you why I think I have ADD, and show you the places where I intersect with the research, but at the moment I'm less interested in doing that than in writing down some random memories about my childhood. I don't write much about my childhood here because I don't think about it much (except for remarking on general trends), but I'm mindful that an ADD diagnosis relies on childhood history. So I want to dredge up some stuff and see what's there. However, instead of trying to selectively remember stuff that fits with ADD, I just want to let myself remember whatever I can. I'm still a writer, after all.

Okay, childhood. Random. I was born in a log cabin. No. "I was born in the wagon of a traveling show..." Where was I born? Right here in Loserville, sad to say. Greater Loserville General Hospital. Later it burned down and all the records were destroyed, so you'll have to take my word for it. My mother was 36 years old when I was born. My father was 40. He was a heavy drinker and my sister says she had a fight with him on the day I was born. She says he wanted to go visit his girlfriend and my sister took his car keys and they fought over them, with him chasing her all over the house. I don't remember how it turned out. I think she finally threw the keys at him as hard as she could. My sister has always held to a very high moral standard, which is a little surprising if you know her history, but her stories can be unreliable.

But enough about Diane. This is about me and my childhood, which I do not remember all that well. The ME part of it.

After being asked "What is your earliest memory?" enough times, I finally fixed on one. I'm not sure it's really my earliest memory, but it suffices. We were in the kitchen, me and my sister (oh damn, I just said I wasn't going to write about her) and she told me she was going to run away and get married, and I could be her flower girl. But then she did get married, and I didn't get to be her flower girl.

Just an aside here from this childhood stuff: I realized at a certain point that some of my mixed feelings about marriage and weddings probably stems at least in part from the fact that people in my family routinely get married without telling or inviting each other.

Okay here's an ADD moment for you: Just now I heard a kid outside shrieking as if in pain, and I realized I had no idea if Jasper was inside or outside, so I shouted, "Jasper? Jasper!" and then jumped up to see if he was in the living room (which he was, the little shit). But as I stood in the kitchen looking for him I heard this rattling noise and felt steam heat on my arm, which startled me and I spun around to find a pot of water on the stove, boiling. Boiled way down, too. And my first response was, How did THAT get there?! which was instantly overtaken by YOU did that. And then I remembered that I had indeed put the water on, and why--because Jasper said he wanted potstickers for lunch.

Anyway, as I was saying. My sister got married twice and I didn't get to go either time. The first time, she really did run away and get married when she was 18, and the second time, years later, was when she married Gary, after he threatened to kill her if she didn't, and there's no way I would have gone to that one even if I had been invited. But I've seen the pictures of her, in the casino chapel, wearing full cowgirl regalia and with her face swollen from drinking.

When I was eight, after extended negotiations between my parents, I flew alone to North Carolina to spend the summer with my father. The big draw for me was the unprecedented opportunity to spend time alone with my Dad. He knew this and spent a lot of time on the phone, trying to persuade me with tantalizing descriptions of the time we would spend together, camping and horseback riding. But when I finally arrived at the airport, he did the strangest thing. He turned to the woman standing beside him and said, "Annabel, this is my wife, Amy."

You want to talk about pissed off. I was one pissed-off little girl, let me tell you. I'm still mad about it. Even at eight years old, I knew it was wrong and I knew why and I was mad at him for putting me on the spot, for luring me out there under false pretenses, and for being such a fucking coward. And as soon as he said it, my dream of what the summer was going to be like was gone and all I could feel in its place was dread.

Okay, but let's stay on track. What was my childhood actually like? Was I lonely?

Yes, sometimes I was lonely. Definitely. Socially, I had problems all the way up through high school that I still don't entirely understand. I went to preschool, but the only thing I remember about that was swinging on the handrail and falling and scraping my chin on the gravel. I don't remember any feelings.

Because I could read, I skipped kindergarten entirely and went directly into first grade. I have sometimes wondered if I was deprived of essential social skills because of it, but mostly I tend to think it probably would not have helped enough to make a difference. I am who I am. I annoy some people, and kindergarten probably would not have ameliorated this tendency much. I used to spend a lot of time thinking about this when I was an adolescent. The question, Why was I disliked? really bothered me and I spent way more time pondering it than it really deserved. It seemed like a puzzle that I could solve if I only thought about it long enough. But I was never satisfied with the answers that make the most sense to me now.

Okay, I'm going to take a break from this and shower. Jasper ate all his potstickers, too. Will wonders never cease.

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