Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder (A.A.A.D.D.)

So, you have noticed that your mum asks you the same questions every day, she never remembers the name of anything or anyone, even confusing you with your siblings and your dog! We’ll i guess it has been said that these things happen with age, but it also could be a little more serious! Check her out for A.A.A.D.D. - Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. Don’t worry, ths does not involve rubber gloves or any orifices! Just watch her for one day. This is how it manifests:

She decides to wash the car. As she walks toward the garage, she notices that there is mail on the hall table. She decides to go through the mail before she starts with the car. She lays the car keys down on the table, puts the junk mail in the bin under the table, and notices that it is full.

So, she decides to put the bills back on the table and take out the rubbish first. But then she thinks, ’since I’m going to be near the mailbox when I take out the rubbish anyway, I may as well pay the bills first’. She takes her chequebook off the table, and sees that there is only one cheque left. The extra cheques are in her desk in the study, so she goes to her desk where she finds the bottle of beer that she had been drinking. She is going to look for her cheques, but first she needs to push the beer aside so that she doesn’t accidentally knock it over. She notices that the beer is getting warm, and she decides to put it in the fridge to keep it cold.

As she heads toward the kitchen with the beer, a potted basil plant on the bench catches her eye- it needs to be watered. She puts the beer down on the bench, and she discovers her reading glasses that she has been searching for all morning. She decides she had better put them back on her desk, but first she is going to water the basil. She sets the glasses back down on the bench, fills a container with water and suddenly she spots the TV remote.

Someone left it on the kitchen table. She realises that tonight when we go to watch TV, we will be looking for the remote, but nobody will remember that it’s on the kitchen table, so she decides to put it back in the lounge room where it belongs, but first she’ll water the basil.

She splashes some water on the basil, but most of it spills on the floor because she is uncoordinated. So, she sets the remote back down on the table, gets some towels and wipes up the mess. Then she heads down the hall trying to remember what she was planning to do.

At the end of the day: the car isn’t washed, the bills aren’t paid, there is a warm bottle of beer on the bench, there is still only one cheque in her chequebook, she can’t find the remote, she can’t find her glasses, and she doesn’t remember what she did with the car keys. Then when she tries to figure out why nothing got done today, she is really baffled because she was busy all day long, and is really tired.

So you’ve realised that your mum has a serious problem. I suggest the best way to handle it is to ’remind’ her everyday of all the lovely things she promised she would buy, cook, give, lend, clean, etc for you, that your siblings are evil spawns of satan and that you are her favourite!