ADHD Anecdote--Classic Josh (forgetting the one needed thing)

You know how I mentioned that there's this book that I have to read for an essay (which is due today at 5:45)? Well, a good friend of mine who is a fellow intern at the agency I work at was kind enough to bring it to me yesterday.



So, after a long day of therapizing, paperwork, etc. I decide to leave early and not do casenotes so I can work on the stuff due today. I hop in my car and start driving when it occurs to me that, genius that I am, I have left the text required for the essay I plan to work on at the agency. Such a familiar, familiar feeling, this careless forgetting, yet nonetheless totally frustrating.

By this point, mind you, it's 10:00pm (I work late on Wednesdays). So, I turn around, barely avoiding the attention of a passing patrol car, and wind my way back to the agency. When I get up to do the door, I am horrified a second time. I, genius that I am again, do not have the key to the front door of the agency.

So, there I stand, torn between wanting to be responsible and wanting to be home, frustrated that yet again--and after all these years--I still do stuff like this constantly constantly constantly, debating whether I should await the janitor who is making his rounds on the second floor, or just go home.

I call Lolly. She has already gone to bed. I've now woken up my sleeping wife. (She seriously is a saint for not disowning me for stuff like this.) She sweetly looks for the key I left so that I could maybe come home and then go to the agency in the morning (before it opened).

Minutes and minutes pass. She does not respond. It's cold. My breath is starting to frost in the cooling air. My hands are freezing. I start pacing back and forth, eyes glued to the second-story window looking for the janitor to finish doing his thing, switching the phone from hand to hand, warming one in a pocket while the other holds the phone to my ear.

"I couldn't find it," she says. Crap. I now must without question wait for the janitor to finish. And, added bonus: I have lost the key to the front door to the building I work in, which I need to return upon graduating. Genius!

An hour or so later, I was home, book in hand. Thankfully.

What does this story say about me? Not sure. Murphy's law says this kind of thing happens to everybody. But for me, this is so commonplace it's almost laughable. All I know is that there was one thing I needed to leave the agency with yesterday in order to function today. And somehow, somehow, I managed to walk out the door without that one thing.

Kind of obnoxious.

But, today is going much better. Got out the door on time, and am now on campus, ready to essay my way to a graduate degree. Go Josh!

(And yes, ps, I started to walk out the door this morning without having put the stupid book in my bag.)

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