So, I went to the pricey, trendy grocery store that features organic, free range, gluten free and just generally higher quality stuff than my normal supermarket. I don't do it very often, because it is significantly more expensive, but we do enjoy a lot of their offerings. Plus, I know people who raise this sort of food, and how hard they work, and I'd like to see them make some serious money doing so.
I bought a bunch of organic carrots of assorted colors - red, orange, purple and yellow - to roast with a chicken for Sunday dinner. I was feeling pretty proud of myself; they're good for me, my money goes to a small, organic farm, and they'll look gorgeous on my table. A win all the way around, right?
My eighteen year old was in the kitchen with me when I took them out of the refrigerator. He made a sound of significant alarm - "AAAAHHHHH!" Coming closer, he poked and pinched them. "Why are they weird colors?" As I started to trim them, he was even more distressed. The cores of the purple carrots were yellowish with a green tint. "They're green! Purple and green carrots are just wrong!"
For crying out loud!
This is a child who has eaten snails and kangaroo. He has actually plucked green ants off of a tree in Australia and eaten them. "They're OK - they taste kinda like limes."
I have no worries that he'll starve next year at college. He routinely cooks at home - actual cooking, not boiling water for ramen noodles. He'll make himself a bacon cheeseburger for breakfast, or a grilled turkey and cheddar sandwich on sourdough for dinner. One of the family favorites he made sure he knew how to make himself is a chicken and rice bake.
Yet brightly colored carrots alarm him? Really?
He also dislikes pasta, of any kind. He can't stand all beef hot dogs. While I love homemade chili, he will nibble it and say, "Can't we just get the good stuff, in cans?"
I shouldn't be surprised. He is my third child.
When my oldest was about 13, I picked some apples from the tree in the back yard and brought them in to make a pie. This, again, is a best case scenario for me. They're free, I know there have been no pesticides used on or near them, and they're the freshest of the fresh, going from tree to oven in minutes. It's one of my favorite fall rituals. Again, an all around win, yes?
No.
She literally squirmed with distaste. "You're going to eat those? After they've been (tone of horror) outside in the yard? With all the bugs and dirt and things?"
Sigh. "I washed them."
"Did you disinfect them?"
"No! I did not disinfect them! One of the best parts about eating them is that there are no chemicals on them!"
(Tone of horror again:) "And you expect us to eat them?"
My mother grew up on a farm. It was her job to pluck and clean the chickens before her mother cooked them. It was her brother's job to catch and behead them, but he was incompetent at it, so nine times out of ten, Mom caught it, killed it, drained it, then had to pluck and gut it. As a kid, I routinely snacked on raspberries, strawberries, carrots and plums from our yard, rather than go into the house and ask my mother to make me something. I would simply wipe a carrot on my pants before eating it. Now, I found myself standing in my kitchen having this surreal conversation with my daughter. My mind boggled.
"Where do you think the apples in the grocery store come from?"
She's very bright; I could see her engage the gears in her brain to come up with the correct answer. Still, she put on a hopeful grin and said, "A big, sterile warehouse somewhere?"
I can be gentle and tactful, really I can. I frequently choose not to. "You know how, on the way to Aunt Lynne's house, we drive by all those orchards alongside the highway?"
Wariness: "Yeah?"
"That's where most of our apples come from. Outside, with the bugs and dirt, not far from the California smog, right next to the relentless freeway exhaust. Plus, they're sprayed with pesticides several times a year." There. Mock my apples, and I will make you lose your appetite, so that I can eat your share of the pie. Reality check.
My kids, all of them, also have food preferences that are hard to understand. Take, for instance, their universal hatred of onions. They are all convinced that onions are the spawn of the devil. As children, they would scrape their McDonald's burgers to within an inch of their lives, to avoid any chance of getting a sliver of onion. They can find the tiniest, minced bit of onion in any dish, and would hold it up, speared on a fork, to proclaim, "You put onions in this!" I took to using only granulated onion or onion powder, but something like jarred pasta sauce would produce outrage. They hate peppers, all peppers, too, but not with the passion reserved for onions.
When my second born went away to culinary school, she came home on breaks, and began to make observations like, "Why don't you put any onions or peppers in that? Most people put onions and peppers in."
(Have you lived in your body for your entire life, child?) "Because you hate onions and peppers. All of you hate them. You would refuse to eat it if I added any."
"Oh. Well, I like it that way now. It's pretty good."
Moral of the story: we should, apparently, not feed our own children, but everyone else's. That way, they'll eat, and like, things.
Well, that and I set up my Sunday dinner so that I could have seconds on carrots.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Friday, February 15, 2013
Houseguests
My middle daughter recently pointed out to me that my two younger children apparently did not know the story about the time I lived with two male strippers.
It's not as interesting, or salacious, as it sounds.
I moved out of my parents' house at 18, just months after my high school graduation. I moved in with my sister and her husband. They needed a roommate in order to make the rent on their four bedroom house, and I wanted to feel like an adult. That living arrangement lasted for 3 months, until my junior high best friend invited me to get an apartment with her.
We had been inseparable at 13 and 14, and then she'd moved away, and we spent years almost 2,000 miles apart. Now she was back, we were adults, and living together sounded like great fun.
We chose a fairly upscale apartment complex, with a gated entry, a fitness center and tons of amenities that we never used.
I think we'd been there all of two weeks when she came to me with a sob story. Two of her friends, young men named Clint and something ordinary like Josh were "living in their car. They have nowhere to go." Could they stay with us "just for awhile," until they could "save money" for their own place?
I'm a soft touch, softer than I should be. I was hesitant, but they assured me that it would be extremely short term.
It was 1985, and minimum wage was $2.15 per hour. I made a whopping $2.35 an hour at my first job, where I worked 20 hours a week. At my second job, I made minimum wage and worked 26 hours a week. My roommate had a 40 hour a week office job - she made more than I did, but she wasn't wealthy. Clint and Josh were strippers. I could not imagine how they were so short of money that they needed us to bail them out, unless they had serious drug problems (and I wasn't ruling that out). I reluctantly agreed, as long as it was extremely short term, just a few days. "Two weeks, tops," they promised.
Usually, when I tell this story, I add that I would not have paid these men to take their clothes off for me. In fairness, it has never occurred to me to pay anyone to disrobe for me. I did not go to see "Magic Mike." Do not ever waste your money or time inviting me to "Thunder from Down Under." I am not a stripper's target audience, male or female. Still, these guys were ordinary looking, and young enough to still have acne across their backs (although old enough to legally strip as a career), so maybe they didn't make a ton of money. They made a whole heck of a lot more than I made, though, so why were they sleeping on my couch?
OK, I know why they were sleeping on my couch. Six years into my friendship with my roommate, I was aware that she had an almost universal pheromonal effect on men. I had spent more time than I really wanted to think about watching two guys - friends, brothers, cousins, you name it - make the deal with each other: "We'll both hit on the hot one. Whichever one she doesn't choose can have her friend." They were pretty sure that living with two girls would mean an endless Playboy mansion party for them. Plus, the women were footing the bill. What could go wrong?
Women, does this ever work? Have you ever been the friend with the "great personality" who stood around waiting for guys your friends had rejected, so you could snatch them up for yourself? Most males seem to do this ridiculous tag team mating dance, and I simply cannot imagine that it ever works. Still, it must work often enough that guys keep doing it.
Ladies: Stop that! Don't feed this behavior! Gentlemen: No one will ever think you're irresistible if you view them as a consolation prize!
So these men slept late every day and couldn't be out apartment hunting "because they work nights." They ate the food we (mostly I) bought, watched our TV, used our hot water, and wandered around in less clothing than is acceptable in public. I'm sure that they thought that the scanty nature of their wardrobes was a turn on, and that we were incredibly privileged to see it for free, but it was annoying. I had zero romantic interest in either of them. I don't know if my roommate had any, but I never saw her demonstrate some.
Asking them to put something on usually led to ridiculous statements like, "I am wearing something. I usually walk around naked," or, "I put on underwear for you. I sleep in the nude." EEEEWWWW. So not attractive.
One sunny Saturday, Clint pushed too far, wardrobe-wise. I was sitting in our little breakfast nook eating when Clint wandered out onto our second story balcony in BLACK MESH BIKINI UNDERWEAR. Who knew that anyone even manufactured those? He leaned against the railing, surveying his domain, in full view of our parking lot and the apartment complex next door. It was just beyond words. I almost burst a blood vessel.
I yanked open the sliding glass door and hissed, "Get in here! We have neighbors! What are you thinking?"
Clint was baffled. "What?"
"Get inside! Right now! And put some pants on!"
"What's wrong with you?"
At that point, I unleashed a torrent of words, none of them complimentary, including, "People can see you!" I may have said something to the effect of, "Put on some pants or I'll put them on for you."
I think it was shortly after that that I put my foot down. The strippers had to go. Now. They'd been there for weeks on end, we were violating the terms of our lease by even having them there, they hadn't contributed a single dollar or even a washed dish to contribute to their upkeep, and I never wanted to see their sorry, skimpy underwear again. They had to GO.
My roommate was aghast. Where would they go? What would they do? I didn't care.
The men were aghast. Couldn't they stay just a little longer, to "get back on their feet?" No - it had already been much longer than the agreed upon time frame. They'd end up sleeping in their car again, they said. "It's summer; you won't freeze," I said.
They had NO money, they swore. "You make more in one night than I make in a month! Where does it GO?" There was much mumbling about debts, and gas, and expenses. "I don't care. If I could manage to get enough together on minimum wage, you can get it together. If you can't, it's not my problem."
I gave them until the end of the week to get out, or I'd notify the apartment management, and they'd toss them out. "They'll kick you out too," the men threatened. After all, we'd violated our lease by letting them stay with us.
"Let them. I have somewhere else to go. I have family. I have friends. I have a bank account. If worse comes to worst, I have a van. I can sleep there."
They spent the rest of the week taking my roommate aside and saying things like, "Can't you talk to her?"
"I have," she would wail. "She doesn't listen!" Point of fact: I listened, quietly and politely. Then I stated my position. I just didn't agree with her, or cave in. When you have arguments, folks, don't accuse people of not listening simply because they don't agree with you. It's not the same thing.
The men left in a huff. I never saw or heard from them again.
My roommate was furious. According to her, I was selfish and controlling and had NO compassion. I had also made her look bad in front of her friends. I truly did not care how she saw the situation. I may have been 19 years old at that point, but emotionally I was middle aged. I was never young.
I didn't feel bad for a second. I still don't.
Just as an aside, my roommate and I never made it through the six months for which we'd signed a lease. This was not the first, last, only or most serious argument we had. We moved out on less than friendly terms, and didn't speak to each other for months. We managed to repair things, to an extent, later, but we never again considered living together.
So, after my daughter brought it up, I told my teenaged kids the abbreviated version of this story over pizza and wings at one of our favorite pizza places. (There is a moral in there, kids.) Maybe I should have worried about whether or not people at surrounding tables were listening. Sorry about your appetites, folks.
I was rewarded with, "Geez, Mom. You know interesting people."
Think of how embarrassing the story would be if I had enjoyed the experience.
It's not as interesting, or salacious, as it sounds.
I moved out of my parents' house at 18, just months after my high school graduation. I moved in with my sister and her husband. They needed a roommate in order to make the rent on their four bedroom house, and I wanted to feel like an adult. That living arrangement lasted for 3 months, until my junior high best friend invited me to get an apartment with her.
We had been inseparable at 13 and 14, and then she'd moved away, and we spent years almost 2,000 miles apart. Now she was back, we were adults, and living together sounded like great fun.
We chose a fairly upscale apartment complex, with a gated entry, a fitness center and tons of amenities that we never used.
I think we'd been there all of two weeks when she came to me with a sob story. Two of her friends, young men named Clint and something ordinary like Josh were "living in their car. They have nowhere to go." Could they stay with us "just for awhile," until they could "save money" for their own place?
I'm a soft touch, softer than I should be. I was hesitant, but they assured me that it would be extremely short term.
It was 1985, and minimum wage was $2.15 per hour. I made a whopping $2.35 an hour at my first job, where I worked 20 hours a week. At my second job, I made minimum wage and worked 26 hours a week. My roommate had a 40 hour a week office job - she made more than I did, but she wasn't wealthy. Clint and Josh were strippers. I could not imagine how they were so short of money that they needed us to bail them out, unless they had serious drug problems (and I wasn't ruling that out). I reluctantly agreed, as long as it was extremely short term, just a few days. "Two weeks, tops," they promised.
Usually, when I tell this story, I add that I would not have paid these men to take their clothes off for me. In fairness, it has never occurred to me to pay anyone to disrobe for me. I did not go to see "Magic Mike." Do not ever waste your money or time inviting me to "Thunder from Down Under." I am not a stripper's target audience, male or female. Still, these guys were ordinary looking, and young enough to still have acne across their backs (although old enough to legally strip as a career), so maybe they didn't make a ton of money. They made a whole heck of a lot more than I made, though, so why were they sleeping on my couch?
OK, I know why they were sleeping on my couch. Six years into my friendship with my roommate, I was aware that she had an almost universal pheromonal effect on men. I had spent more time than I really wanted to think about watching two guys - friends, brothers, cousins, you name it - make the deal with each other: "We'll both hit on the hot one. Whichever one she doesn't choose can have her friend." They were pretty sure that living with two girls would mean an endless Playboy mansion party for them. Plus, the women were footing the bill. What could go wrong?
Women, does this ever work? Have you ever been the friend with the "great personality" who stood around waiting for guys your friends had rejected, so you could snatch them up for yourself? Most males seem to do this ridiculous tag team mating dance, and I simply cannot imagine that it ever works. Still, it must work often enough that guys keep doing it.
Ladies: Stop that! Don't feed this behavior! Gentlemen: No one will ever think you're irresistible if you view them as a consolation prize!
So these men slept late every day and couldn't be out apartment hunting "because they work nights." They ate the food we (mostly I) bought, watched our TV, used our hot water, and wandered around in less clothing than is acceptable in public. I'm sure that they thought that the scanty nature of their wardrobes was a turn on, and that we were incredibly privileged to see it for free, but it was annoying. I had zero romantic interest in either of them. I don't know if my roommate had any, but I never saw her demonstrate some.
Asking them to put something on usually led to ridiculous statements like, "I am wearing something. I usually walk around naked," or, "I put on underwear for you. I sleep in the nude." EEEEWWWW. So not attractive.
One sunny Saturday, Clint pushed too far, wardrobe-wise. I was sitting in our little breakfast nook eating when Clint wandered out onto our second story balcony in BLACK MESH BIKINI UNDERWEAR. Who knew that anyone even manufactured those? He leaned against the railing, surveying his domain, in full view of our parking lot and the apartment complex next door. It was just beyond words. I almost burst a blood vessel.
I yanked open the sliding glass door and hissed, "Get in here! We have neighbors! What are you thinking?"
Clint was baffled. "What?"
"Get inside! Right now! And put some pants on!"
"What's wrong with you?"
At that point, I unleashed a torrent of words, none of them complimentary, including, "People can see you!" I may have said something to the effect of, "Put on some pants or I'll put them on for you."
I think it was shortly after that that I put my foot down. The strippers had to go. Now. They'd been there for weeks on end, we were violating the terms of our lease by even having them there, they hadn't contributed a single dollar or even a washed dish to contribute to their upkeep, and I never wanted to see their sorry, skimpy underwear again. They had to GO.
My roommate was aghast. Where would they go? What would they do? I didn't care.
The men were aghast. Couldn't they stay just a little longer, to "get back on their feet?" No - it had already been much longer than the agreed upon time frame. They'd end up sleeping in their car again, they said. "It's summer; you won't freeze," I said.
They had NO money, they swore. "You make more in one night than I make in a month! Where does it GO?" There was much mumbling about debts, and gas, and expenses. "I don't care. If I could manage to get enough together on minimum wage, you can get it together. If you can't, it's not my problem."
I gave them until the end of the week to get out, or I'd notify the apartment management, and they'd toss them out. "They'll kick you out too," the men threatened. After all, we'd violated our lease by letting them stay with us.
"Let them. I have somewhere else to go. I have family. I have friends. I have a bank account. If worse comes to worst, I have a van. I can sleep there."
They spent the rest of the week taking my roommate aside and saying things like, "Can't you talk to her?"
"I have," she would wail. "She doesn't listen!" Point of fact: I listened, quietly and politely. Then I stated my position. I just didn't agree with her, or cave in. When you have arguments, folks, don't accuse people of not listening simply because they don't agree with you. It's not the same thing.
The men left in a huff. I never saw or heard from them again.
My roommate was furious. According to her, I was selfish and controlling and had NO compassion. I had also made her look bad in front of her friends. I truly did not care how she saw the situation. I may have been 19 years old at that point, but emotionally I was middle aged. I was never young.
I didn't feel bad for a second. I still don't.
Just as an aside, my roommate and I never made it through the six months for which we'd signed a lease. This was not the first, last, only or most serious argument we had. We moved out on less than friendly terms, and didn't speak to each other for months. We managed to repair things, to an extent, later, but we never again considered living together.
So, after my daughter brought it up, I told my teenaged kids the abbreviated version of this story over pizza and wings at one of our favorite pizza places. (There is a moral in there, kids.) Maybe I should have worried about whether or not people at surrounding tables were listening. Sorry about your appetites, folks.
I was rewarded with, "Geez, Mom. You know interesting people."
Think of how embarrassing the story would be if I had enjoyed the experience.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Do You Hear What I Hear?
Our medical insurance company sends us newsletters, as most do. Sometimes they're informative; sometimes they're forgettable.
Years ago, one newsletter had an article asking, "Are you an adult with undiagnosed ADD?" I read the article and then the quiz that accompanied it. Then I brought it to my husband. "Take a look at these questions," I said. The quiz was supposed to be similar to ones used by doctors to diagnose ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder.
He read through, then chuckled. "That's ridiculous," he said. "That's not going to tell anybody anything."
"How do you figure?" I asked.
"Everyone will answer 'yes' to those questions."
Wow. Unexpected.
"I would answer 'no' to every single one of those questions."
His eyes widened, and he stared at me as if I'd just stepped out of a spaceship. Then he uttered the sentence that would have made me a multimillionaire if I had the proverbial nickel for every time I'd heard it: "Yeah? Well, that's just you."
Answering 6 out of 9 questions on the doctor's questionnaire is a positive ADD diagnosis. When my husband did go in to the doctor for a screening, he answered "yes" to 9 out of 9.
We've both learned a lot about ADD since then, but it's also obvious that our brain chemistry is very different. We occasionally have... interesting conversations.
I dislike driving in large cities, and I usually make my husband do it. Occasionally I'll end up doing it, like the time we flew into Las Vegas in order to visit our daughter at her summer job at Zion National Park. I'm familiar enough with Vegas that I didn't think it would be a big deal, but I did remind the kids to be quiet and non-distracting, at least until we got out of town.
As I was driving the unfamiliar rental car onto the freeway and out into traffic, it wasn't the kids who were distracting me. My husband had to push every button, open every compartment, adjust everything that could be adjusted. After saying, repeatedly, "Please leave that alone," and "That's really distracting - could you leave it be?" I bit his head off about half an hour later as we headed out of town and into the desert. "STOP THAT! I've asked you over and over to leave things ALONE! It's INCREDIBLY distracting! Just leave everything alone!"
He appeared startled, and baffled as to why I would be upset. Then he said, "What do you want me to do, just sit here?"
"YES! YES! That's EXACTLY what I want you to do! It's called 'being a passenger!' What, are you five years old?"
I cannot fathom why this would even be a question. He cannot fathom a world in which a person would willingly leave buttons and knobs, especially in a new and unfamiliar setting, alone.
Reading a similar quiz on sensory processing years ago, I thought that some of the choices on the multiple choice quiz were joke responses. You know how occasionally the writer will throw in an obviously wrong answer? The question might be, "Who was the first president of the United States?" and, for whatever reason, one of the responses will be, "Bugs Bunny." I was positive that one out of every four options was one of those "giveaway" responses that no one would choose.
It turns out that I was wrong. Not only did people choose those responses, but the person I was married to, lived with and combined genes with in order to reproduce was one of those people.
It turns out that I am on the high sensitivity end of the spectrum, and my husband is on the low sensitivity end. While I cringe and cover my ears when I hear sirens, my husband finds this odd. I avoid large crowds and loud noises; my husband finds those things to be exciting. It's a very interesting balancing act when one partner thinks that loud is obnoxious, and one partner thinks that quiet is boring.
High sensitivity people tend to need a large amount of personal space. (Ask my kids how often I say, "Respect the bubble!") Low sensitivity people tend not to know their own strength and therefore frequently break things. (Ask my husband why we cannot buy yard implements like shovels with wooden handles. We have to get fiberglass or steel.)
Naturally, we have kids like me and kids like him. I took my youngest daughter on a school field trip to an art museum a couple of years ago. One of the exhibits consisted of strobe lights going off in a darkened room. Two flashes, and I was crawling out of my skin. Thirty seconds in, I was feeling borderline violent. Even closing my eyes didn't help. The flashes went through my eyelids like they were paper. I could not wait to get out of the room; it was like being pummeled. If a sinister group ever wanted to brainwash me into violence, this would be a good first step. My daughter, on the other hand, kept saying things like, "This is so soothing," and, "This is going to put me to sleep." I finally had to drag her away.
Annoying sounds - alarms, high pitched anything, repetetive noises - make me crazier the longer they go on. The longer they go on, the more my husband tunes them out. Just about the time he has entirely eliminated them from his consciousness, they have driven me insane. I will snap, "Can you shut that thing up?" and nine times out of ten, it'll take him a moment to figure out what "thing" I'm even talking about.
Yeah, it's very interesting balancing these personalities in the same family.
I can at least partially imagine what it must be like to be my husband. He has very little frame of reference for what it's like to be me. Years ago, trying to describe to him what it feels like to be in total overload caused him to respond, "So, you're having too much fun. How terrible that must be." Saying, "It's like being struck" to describe how loud or piercing noises affected me had him responding, "So it's mild and easily ignored." NO! Not the point I was trying to make! I would never have described having someone hit me as easy to ignore!
It was very difficult for him to understand why I do not like thrill rides. He couldn't say, "You'd like it if you just tried it" because I have tried it. That's how I know that I hate it. It is nothing even approaching fun. It is terrifying and nauseating. Study after study shows that the brain waves of people like me have the same reaction to little kiddie rides as the brains of people like my husband have on extreme rides. He knows this is true, but can't imagine it. For my part, I tease him because in those photos taken on rides, he frequently had the same look on his face as he would have had sitting at home on our couch watching TV. Everyone else would be screaming, and he'd be almost blank. (In recent years, he's decided to pose for the cameras, so we know that he's having fun.)
Driving is also interesting. High sensitivity brains tend to see huge "DANGER! DANGER!" flags in situations where ordinary people see nothing amiss. By the time my husband wonders if something is dangerous, I'm in a full blown panic. I hate speed. I hate having vehicles too close to me - this translates not only as too close in front or behind me, but next to me at all. I wish that drivers who weave would spontaneously combust. Once, when parking, I kept insisting I was out of space and needed to stop, and my husband kept urging me to pull up farther. I kept saying, "I'm out of room!" and he kept saying, "You have plenty of room!" Finally, he snapped, "You have a full three inches to spare!" There's our problem. I cannot consider anything under three feet to be "plenty."
At least he's not an adrenaline junkie. I simply do not understand those people. All that, "You're not alive unless you're on the edge!" business causes me to roll my eyes. It's OK - they don't understand me, either. My sit-in-the-quiet-with-a-book sensibilities don't do it for them.
I cannot understand those scenes in movies where the girl squeals at the guy not to drive so fast, or not to do a loop in the plane, but he does and she ends up finding it adorable. If some guy ignored my terror and did something I'd asked him not to, I would not later melt over his sexiness. I'd decide that he was dense and self involved and I'd never want to go out with him again. He, on the other hand, would decide that I was alien and a stick in the mud, and he probably wouldn't miss me.
With luck, though, I'll never have to worry about dating situations again. Neither will my husband. After almost three decades, I think he and I have this marriage thing almost figured out.
Years ago, one newsletter had an article asking, "Are you an adult with undiagnosed ADD?" I read the article and then the quiz that accompanied it. Then I brought it to my husband. "Take a look at these questions," I said. The quiz was supposed to be similar to ones used by doctors to diagnose ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder.
He read through, then chuckled. "That's ridiculous," he said. "That's not going to tell anybody anything."
"How do you figure?" I asked.
"Everyone will answer 'yes' to those questions."
Wow. Unexpected.
"I would answer 'no' to every single one of those questions."
His eyes widened, and he stared at me as if I'd just stepped out of a spaceship. Then he uttered the sentence that would have made me a multimillionaire if I had the proverbial nickel for every time I'd heard it: "Yeah? Well, that's just you."
Answering 6 out of 9 questions on the doctor's questionnaire is a positive ADD diagnosis. When my husband did go in to the doctor for a screening, he answered "yes" to 9 out of 9.
We've both learned a lot about ADD since then, but it's also obvious that our brain chemistry is very different. We occasionally have... interesting conversations.
I dislike driving in large cities, and I usually make my husband do it. Occasionally I'll end up doing it, like the time we flew into Las Vegas in order to visit our daughter at her summer job at Zion National Park. I'm familiar enough with Vegas that I didn't think it would be a big deal, but I did remind the kids to be quiet and non-distracting, at least until we got out of town.
As I was driving the unfamiliar rental car onto the freeway and out into traffic, it wasn't the kids who were distracting me. My husband had to push every button, open every compartment, adjust everything that could be adjusted. After saying, repeatedly, "Please leave that alone," and "That's really distracting - could you leave it be?" I bit his head off about half an hour later as we headed out of town and into the desert. "STOP THAT! I've asked you over and over to leave things ALONE! It's INCREDIBLY distracting! Just leave everything alone!"
He appeared startled, and baffled as to why I would be upset. Then he said, "What do you want me to do, just sit here?"
"YES! YES! That's EXACTLY what I want you to do! It's called 'being a passenger!' What, are you five years old?"
I cannot fathom why this would even be a question. He cannot fathom a world in which a person would willingly leave buttons and knobs, especially in a new and unfamiliar setting, alone.
Reading a similar quiz on sensory processing years ago, I thought that some of the choices on the multiple choice quiz were joke responses. You know how occasionally the writer will throw in an obviously wrong answer? The question might be, "Who was the first president of the United States?" and, for whatever reason, one of the responses will be, "Bugs Bunny." I was positive that one out of every four options was one of those "giveaway" responses that no one would choose.
It turns out that I was wrong. Not only did people choose those responses, but the person I was married to, lived with and combined genes with in order to reproduce was one of those people.
It turns out that I am on the high sensitivity end of the spectrum, and my husband is on the low sensitivity end. While I cringe and cover my ears when I hear sirens, my husband finds this odd. I avoid large crowds and loud noises; my husband finds those things to be exciting. It's a very interesting balancing act when one partner thinks that loud is obnoxious, and one partner thinks that quiet is boring.
High sensitivity people tend to need a large amount of personal space. (Ask my kids how often I say, "Respect the bubble!") Low sensitivity people tend not to know their own strength and therefore frequently break things. (Ask my husband why we cannot buy yard implements like shovels with wooden handles. We have to get fiberglass or steel.)
Naturally, we have kids like me and kids like him. I took my youngest daughter on a school field trip to an art museum a couple of years ago. One of the exhibits consisted of strobe lights going off in a darkened room. Two flashes, and I was crawling out of my skin. Thirty seconds in, I was feeling borderline violent. Even closing my eyes didn't help. The flashes went through my eyelids like they were paper. I could not wait to get out of the room; it was like being pummeled. If a sinister group ever wanted to brainwash me into violence, this would be a good first step. My daughter, on the other hand, kept saying things like, "This is so soothing," and, "This is going to put me to sleep." I finally had to drag her away.
Annoying sounds - alarms, high pitched anything, repetetive noises - make me crazier the longer they go on. The longer they go on, the more my husband tunes them out. Just about the time he has entirely eliminated them from his consciousness, they have driven me insane. I will snap, "Can you shut that thing up?" and nine times out of ten, it'll take him a moment to figure out what "thing" I'm even talking about.
Yeah, it's very interesting balancing these personalities in the same family.
I can at least partially imagine what it must be like to be my husband. He has very little frame of reference for what it's like to be me. Years ago, trying to describe to him what it feels like to be in total overload caused him to respond, "So, you're having too much fun. How terrible that must be." Saying, "It's like being struck" to describe how loud or piercing noises affected me had him responding, "So it's mild and easily ignored." NO! Not the point I was trying to make! I would never have described having someone hit me as easy to ignore!
It was very difficult for him to understand why I do not like thrill rides. He couldn't say, "You'd like it if you just tried it" because I have tried it. That's how I know that I hate it. It is nothing even approaching fun. It is terrifying and nauseating. Study after study shows that the brain waves of people like me have the same reaction to little kiddie rides as the brains of people like my husband have on extreme rides. He knows this is true, but can't imagine it. For my part, I tease him because in those photos taken on rides, he frequently had the same look on his face as he would have had sitting at home on our couch watching TV. Everyone else would be screaming, and he'd be almost blank. (In recent years, he's decided to pose for the cameras, so we know that he's having fun.)
Driving is also interesting. High sensitivity brains tend to see huge "DANGER! DANGER!" flags in situations where ordinary people see nothing amiss. By the time my husband wonders if something is dangerous, I'm in a full blown panic. I hate speed. I hate having vehicles too close to me - this translates not only as too close in front or behind me, but next to me at all. I wish that drivers who weave would spontaneously combust. Once, when parking, I kept insisting I was out of space and needed to stop, and my husband kept urging me to pull up farther. I kept saying, "I'm out of room!" and he kept saying, "You have plenty of room!" Finally, he snapped, "You have a full three inches to spare!" There's our problem. I cannot consider anything under three feet to be "plenty."
At least he's not an adrenaline junkie. I simply do not understand those people. All that, "You're not alive unless you're on the edge!" business causes me to roll my eyes. It's OK - they don't understand me, either. My sit-in-the-quiet-with-a-book sensibilities don't do it for them.
I cannot understand those scenes in movies where the girl squeals at the guy not to drive so fast, or not to do a loop in the plane, but he does and she ends up finding it adorable. If some guy ignored my terror and did something I'd asked him not to, I would not later melt over his sexiness. I'd decide that he was dense and self involved and I'd never want to go out with him again. He, on the other hand, would decide that I was alien and a stick in the mud, and he probably wouldn't miss me.
With luck, though, I'll never have to worry about dating situations again. Neither will my husband. After almost three decades, I think he and I have this marriage thing almost figured out.
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