Those of us with ADHD know this thing– the blurting thing. The urge to just open up our mouths and charge on through any social situation with a THING WE MUST SAY.
Most of the time, this thing is not so socially appropriate.
I remember being thirteen years old in church when suddenly I knew a thing that the pastor MUST ABSOLUTELY KNOW in conjunction with his sermon.
Did you know you weren’t supposed to raise your hands in church?
My stepmother knew and was mortified, even though the pastor was really kind.
Anyway–we get past the blurting thing–sort of. I used to knit during staff meetings or I would be consumed with the THINGS I MUST SAY, and some of that shit would fucking escape if I wasn’t there enjoying angry knitting time. I remember an administrator yelling at me because “I was really sarcastic and I knitted during staff meetings” and I was like, “What does this have to do with you people yelling at us in front of the entire district for our test scores when you’re the asshole who didn’t tell us when we were even having the tests until the week before?” Anyway– yeah.
Self control– eventually (forty-ish) we learn it.
Of course like everything else with ADHD this whole “self-control” thing is dependent upon a reasonable amount of traffic with the conductor who is managing our brain impulses. So, if like you’re trying to plan for a trip and manage your dogs and buy a gift for a friend before you leave and schedule a pedicure before you leave so it doesn’t interfere with picking up your kids and you’re getting texts from your daughter and you need to buy those skeins of yarn dammit and get out of there before your son thinks you’re dead…
Well, your mild inconvenience just blurted out of your mouth at the poor yarn shop proprietess who is usually the greatest of friends.
I apologized, of course, embarrassed. I didn’t mean to interrupt her and another customer–I was so focused on my own not-emergency that I didn’t even see the person who was next in line.
And Babetta knows me. She’s even seen me overcome by THINGS I MUST SAY before–and she understood. But still, when it was my turn to be interrupted when I was at the counter, I knew it was my turn to be gracious and kind to the interrupters. They weren’t being intentionally rude, any more than I was.
So I turned around and told them that.
“That’s okay guys– you’re not the first people today guilty of proprietess interruptus.”
FTR? Babetta thought that was hysterical.
