This is the first batch of messages I've seen in this echo, but on the 
other  hand, I've only been connected for a few days now.  I'm glad to 
be here.
I don't know if this is normal, but I feel like introducing myself, so 
here goes.
I'm a 36 year old guy...married (second time), employed in a job that I 
like (for the most part).  As I've gotten older and matured, although I
have learned to accept and deal with my ADHD, it has proven to be a 
mixed blessing.
Blessing you ask?  Yes, there has been a lot of talk about ADD, and almost 
all of it is negative...a behaviour problem in school, always getting in 
fights, not getting along with siblings...that was me.  Sometimes I think
back to what i put my family/friends/teachers through, and it is kind of 
embarrassing.  But, yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and I'm 
doing the best I can, just for today.
I was a terror for a lot of my early life...doctors, teachers...nobody 
could control me...I wasn't stupid...I kept hearing it all the time "He
knows the subject, he can do the work - but he won't finish anything!"
That was all true...I could work on something...until something 
distracted me.  Then BOOM, I was off on a tangent.
It wasn't until 2nd grade that someone finally figured it out.  We had
recently moved to a area in rural Missouri, after my father had been 
transfered out there.  It was that teacher in the small town we lived 
in (population approx. 500) that thought I might be "Hyperactive" (that
was what they called it in 1966), so I was refered to testing, and it
was determined that this was the case...put me on Ritalin...the change 
was dramatic...not a panacea, but the improvement was remarkable.  Oh 
sure, I wasn't perfect - but now I was more in line with my siblings.
I still had to learn a lot - my coordination was extremely bad, I had a
very hard time making friends.  Perhaps that's why through my early life,
I had few friends - although the ones I had were good ones.
(I'll leave out a lot of detail here' for the sake of brevity, besides, 
I'm bored with this line of thought right now).
When I was 15, I was taken off the Ritalin, for at the time (1975) it 
was felt that you outgrew the problem.  I would not say I outgrew it, 
however;  it certainly changed, but I still had it...I still felt like 
I needed  "something".
When I was in 12th grade, as I was working on my own car, I found it an 
easy way to make money, by doing work for other people. I tried to keep 
it to simple jobs, and I could work great as long as it didn't beat my 
attention span.
It seems many ADD / ADHD people have difficulty getting & holding jobs.
Although this was certainly true at first, it's not true any longer. 
I've always enjoyed working with mechanical things (for example, at the
age of 5, my grandfather taught me how to rewire a lamp...it actually 
worked when I was done.  Feeling so proud of myself, I went home and 
decided to fix the mixer (which wasn't broken)...it never ran again.
Cut to the present day, October, 1996...
I work for a meat processing plant in Detroit's Eeastern Market as the
2nd shift maintenance supervisor (an empty title, there's nobody below 
me).  During a typical night, I will have several projects going at 
once...usually, I set my own projects, sequence, etc...I can work at 
one, work really hard and achieve great results...if I start getting 
bored with it, I'll just move to another project, and another, and 
another, until all is done.  The best part is when a crisis occurs -
- I can immediately drop what I'm doing and "shift gears", then move 
onto where I'm needed...resolve that, then go right back to what I 
was doing.
Sorry for boring everybody, but I guess what I want to say is, parents,
hang in there - persevere, and one day, you'll be very glad you did,
although I'm sure you don't believe it right now.
... Need more taglines? Quote every line of a message written at 4 AM.
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