I was recently diagnosed with ADHD or at least I think I was but the doctor took forever to explain his diagnosis and after a while, he just sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher who I think was a trombone, or a kazoo (or was Kazoo the genie from The Flinstones?), or maybe a trumpet with a piece of Tupperware over the end of it which reminded me I had leftovers in the fridge.
And I remember how CB used to sit there and wait for his teacher to explain or instruct or override what Chuck was saying or doing and even thinking in clear drivethruese and Charlie, of course, never really listened and just waited for his turn to talk, which he never really got, and I don’t even have the time for self-important people to give their ten minute explanation for something that could be completed clearly and concisely in two.
Their thinking needs quite a bit of the kind of shorthand that could turn a novel into flash fiction or perhaps just a novella and the meetings and conversations that used to be long and drawn out and had some sort of content where at least you walked away from them with something you could bite into when the bronco started bucking but today even though they are ‘efficient,’ they say nothing except reinforcing their agenda and probably saving a lot on therapy.
The doctor likes to talk and look out in the distance with the earpiece of his glasses in his mouth and won’t maintain eye contact as if he’s Macbeth in soliloquy and I could slip out and come back twenty minutes from now without being missed or missing anything except the spittle projected on the forehead that needs to be squeegeed when one makes a point and he probably needs less Bill and more Abe so I’ll send him eighty-seven envelopes and a metro card.
The news used to be an hour long or sometimes longer if you read the entire paper but, for a while, we Cliffnotesed it into twenty-two minutes and then a seven minute rant from Johnny who got snubbed by a chin strong guy with a cartoon face that flips then flops but then flips again and covers the whole world but should have stayed in the closet after thumbing the gat-toothed, not Chaucer's Wife, and leaving the politics to a daily comedian.
The law-abiders in the left lane need to stop thumbing and move especially when it stalls me like the guy who named the Malta-Poo which crosses a Maltese and Poodle and not a bowel movement on an island and based on the name, I would never want one or to visit there but if it was called a Moodle, which sounds so much more inviting and playful, and to be honest makes so much more sense and it’s something I’d pet and walk and even order in an Italian restaurant if it came with garlic bread and meatballs, and I think I’d actually have to get one just to keep people guessing as I walked it down the street giving it a different name to each person that inquired.
I watched his lips move and I wondered why they gave such disease or disorder or condition or whatever it’s classified as such a long name when the people who suffer from it drift off when they’re halfway through saying it even after they lengthened the name and added ‘hyperactivity’ to the middle which makes me mental as it takes someone ten minutes to tongue-twister it out and now that the HD is at the end of it, it depresses me not about my condition but about how I don’t have an HD television with the Barbara Walters filter.
He had the newspaper on his desk which had ‘Subway Hero’ as the headline and I wondered if it meant Good Samaritan (but just Samaritan would do for Jesus) on a subterranean train or tasty sandwich or maybe it’s an underground sandwich that no one knows about which is redundantly redundant.
So for now, I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this doctor who feels the need to spew everything he learned in medical school at me perhaps so I get my money’s worth but I didn’t give him my entire medical history in real time and I don’t know what to do with the Attention Deficit HD but I could use a sub or hero or hoagie or a blimpie whatever the hell that is and I just hope it doesn’t turn me into the Hindenburg where people cringe when they see me on the subway.
