Well lets see how this thing works.
`Hello All,
        I'm, Brendan.  I hope you'll excuse me for venting.  As far as I can 
tell
every member of my immediate family is learning disabled in some fashion or 
another.
My two older sisters are dyslexic as was my father.  My mother @ 65yr.s h
as been diagnosed w/add and she's convinced that I as well as my late  father 
were stricken.   When she  grade school she would place her coat over her 
head in class so she could concentrate enough to read.  She suffered from 
hypothyroidism/low bloodpressure and was prescribed Dexedrine/thyroid when 
she was in jr.h.s. to maintain her weight/blood pressure.  Then a miracle 
occurred.  Suddenly she could concentrate for as long as she cared to with 
out distraction.  Her grades improved dramatically as did her spirits.  All 
thanks to the thyroid (or so the doctors thought).  She continued taking dex. 
for another ten years till her doctor became concerned with possible side 
effects (i.e. addiction).
        My father had a genius I.Q. and was the finest engineer in the 
country in his chosen
field of expertise. But he was also a organizational disaster.  He would 
often become lost coming home from work or misplace he briefcase coming in 
from the car to the house.
I’ve always read at an excelerated level for my age and in the first grade 
was ear-marked for the gifted students program when the funding in Cal. was 
cut. Some time around the first or second grade (for reasons still unclear to 
me), I stopped using the toilet for defecation.  and within a year I was in 
an alternative methods school.  I stayed there till 7th grade when I 
transferred back to public school  and the real problems started.  I was 
getting A's in science w/out studying a lick, as well as A's and B's in 
history and math. But I was failing English  I couldn't write cursive and my 
printing was nearly illegible.  I was so stressed by my first fifteen page 
report that II dropped out of the 7th grade half way through the last 
semester rather than completing it.  I returned again in the fall for the 8th 
grade claiming to have come down with a bad case of lice to explain my 
absence.
                My friend Eric and I had most of our classes together  In 
high school  And about half of his essays were dictated to him by me as I 
would pace around his living room, bouncing
Ideas of the walls. He would always  get B's with those papers, while I would 
procrastinate  mine till 6 hours before It was due and grind out a D.  My Jr. 
yr. term paper was a 5-0m page report that sent me into a my first real 
depression.  I stopped going to classes and then getting out of bed till I 
was assured that I could start fresh in another district a month later,  
after being diagnosed  with disgraphia (though not given any tools to deal 
with my handicap and only half convinced the was one).  as time went on I 
would half jokingly ask my mother if she belonged to the disability of the 
month club. Partially succumbing to my grandmother and second oldest brothers 
views that all this talk of dyslexia and disgraphia was either a smoke screen 
 for my mothers' poor parenting Or a rationalization tool to explain why her 
kids were all fucked up.
        So when this add thing surfaced about a year ago I took it very 
lightly.  "Shure Mom," .... "We've all got add"....... Have you been talking 
to the space people again?" (They were the People responsible for all the 
codependents in the late eighties.  My fiend Dave is a family counselor and 
last month I was venting at him when he suggested we look at the D.M.S.R. to 
see what it said.  He showed me the page with the symptom behaviors and we 
were both a
little  shocked. Of the 14 or so examples all but three were things I would 
consider (on a scale of 1-5, 5 being most frequent,) at least 4's.  Dave said 
" yea,  But ya see They've got to last at least 6 months."   I said that I 
couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t do all those things.
        So now what.  We've got a name for my lack of organization.  But can 
someone tell me what I can do about it.   It's like some cruel joke Played on 
an Olympic sprinter,  "I Know I can run like hell If I could just get the 
damn laces untied "
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