Convergence

Looking back, I see that I've concentrated (concentrated — that's a joke, get it?) on the attention deficit area and almost completely ignored the hyperactivity. They say you should write about what you know, and that's what happened.

When my ADHD is really kicking up badly, the result is not hyperactivity. It's stupor. All of a sudden, I'm passing out in the middle of a page. My head is bobbing up and down so frequently you'd think I belonged on the rear window ledge of someone's '77 Grand Prix, and my eyelids are sliding southward in response.

This first manifested itself when I was in, I guess, tenth grade. I'd always been a precocious, rapid reader. In elementary school, I tore through books. But in high school I suddenly noticed that I was drifting off whenever I read. Had nothing to do with the subject matter, how much sleep I'd had or what the Yankees were up to. Open Book, look at pages, close eyes. It was getting to be a serious situation, and had reached the point of being self-fulfilling prophecy.

I'd been wearing glasses since I was a little kid, and I hadn't needed a new prescription in a couple of years, so vision wasn't a potential villain. Or so I thought.

What prompted my mother to take me to a new ophthalmologist is a question that, now, will never be answered, but something did, and a new word entered my vocabulary: Convergence.

It's a long story, but I'll begin to explain this whole mess, and some intriguing sidelights, over the next few postings.