ADHD Solutions on a Saturday for Choosing Your Spouse and Improving Public Safety

I was thinking this morning about how to write the introduction to my book, SIMPLIFY: One ADHDer’s Bold Plan to End the ADHD Tax and Reduce Societal Chaos. For some reason, my mind leapt down the rabbit hole of ruminating about where my marriage went off track. It boiled down to this (my thought, that is, not the rabbit -- let's not revisit Fatal Attraction):

It's f*cking hard to build a life with someone when you cannot agree on how to load a dishwasher.

Before you move in together, or get married, do me this one favor: have your partner load the dishwasher in front of you. It can be a deal breaker.

I, for one, like my utensils facing downward when I load a dishwasher. This is so logical to me. When anyone removes said utensils from the dishwasher using my method, there are no fingerprints on the parts of the silverware that might go near my mouth. Even pre-Covid, I've always been a tad skeeved by germs. It used to take me every ounce of self-restraint to act as if I was okay with someone drinking from my glass or biting off of my sandwich. (Then I'd pretend I was no longer thirsty or hungry to avoid salivary contact.)

This got me thinking about the many miscommunications my husband and I have had over the years. Many were brought on by my mildly autistic, literal interpretations of what I was hearing, coupled with my slower auditory processing. But there was an incident early on in our relationship where I will forever believe I was in the right. I hope you will agree.

This telling moment was before we got married. It was 2002 and I was living with Dave in his Florida home. One morning I asked him where he placed something I was missing. He answered, "In the washroom" as he gestured in the direction of the first-floor half-bath. For context, just beyond that half-bath was our laundry room. 

I searched high and low in that tiny half-bath for my missing item. It was nowhere to be found. My tolerance for stuff like this is — as the waiter once described a mint to John Cleese in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life — "WAFER THIN" (before devolving into the most epic puke scene in film history.) Anyhow, the space between my last nerve and going nuclear was, indeed, WAFER THIN.

I demanded that Dave show me exactly where he put the missing item in the washroom. To my astonishment, he walked past the half-bath, making a beeline directly for the laundry room, and pointed to me where he had placed the missing item. This was how our conversation went down after that:

"Dave! This is NOT the WASHroom. THIS is the LAUNDRY room." Then I pointed toward the half-bath. "THAT is the WASHroom!"

"No, THIS is the WASHroom!" he declared, pointing to the floor where we were standing, in the laundry room.  "THIS is where you do the WASH!" he reasoned.

I wasn't about to let this go. 

"Okay, let's say you're eight years old. You're shopping with your mom at a department store and you have to take a piss. How do you ask the nice saleslady where you go to take a piss?"

"I'd ask her, 'Where is the RESTroom?'" he sneered, thinking he'd won. 

"UGH! I give UP!" (But inside, I didn’t. Not really.)

The point of this story -- and I do have one --  is that when communication gets disrupted, chaos ensues. Whenever I start a writing or editing project for a client, I insist upon either receiving or creating an editorial standards guideline. I need everyone speaking and understanding the same language. Married couples should also create their own editorial guidelines. It doesn’t have to be hard. If couples can conjure safe words for their kinkier moments, they can create a shared language for their G-rated moments. When couples follow the same set of verbal and written rules, life is more peaceful. (This is also why I get so furious with those rapscallions over at the Associated Press Stylebook headquarters, who arbitrarily and abruptly change their word police rules, e.g., "more than" and "over" can now be used interchangeably after I just spent the last 30 years editing text for the correct usage.) 

As an ADHDer, I spend my life trying to overcompensate for being misunderstood. I over-explain myself to the point of sounding ridiculous, or worse, defensive. If I ever got arrested for something, the cops would think I was guilty just based on my over-explaining.

Perhaps this is why I cling to my grammar rules like Charlton Heston clung to his Second Amendment rights.

You'd think for someone with ADHD, I'd be more squishy about rigid rules. After all, we ADHDers can gravitate toward a world of “ish,” as in, “I’ll get there around…8-ish.” Yeah, I'll admit, if no one's around, I can break some rules. I find stop signs to be more of a suggestion than a serious rule. That goes for speed limits, too. But communicating with each other? That’s different. It's essential. It's my line in the sand when it comes to gettin’ squishy with the rules.

Miscommunication triggers epic feuds. Misplaced commas can trigger lawsuits. World wars, even. This is why my personal pronouns are Oxford/Comma. For neurodivergents and ADHDers, miscommunication triggers societal chaos. But it doesn't have to. If we all shared the same standardized, foundational understanding of how to do something, or how to interpret information, there would be fewer unforced errors. There’s a reason why Google Sheets and Microsoft Word look, feel, and work the same.

Here's one example. In Florida, where I'm living again now after a 15-year absence, there's a colored flag system on the beaches to tell you if it's safe to swim in the ocean. Riptides cause drownings. But I'm from the Midwest. There's no flag system on the beaches of Lake Michigan. I literally thought the flags were just festive, pretty decorations. I had no context to think otherwise. 

Even native Floridians don't always know what those colored beach flags represent. This is why people drown.. The folks in charge of beach safety will tell you, "EVERYBODY knows what those flags mean!" 

But no. No they do not. 

In 2003, a CNN reporter drowned in Northwest Florida's Walton County while vacationing on a day that will live in infamy, Black Sunday. That same day, there were seven other drownings happened on the Emerald Coast because of the deadly riptides. I guarantee those folks did not know how to heed the flag system. Here's what a Northwest Florida Daily News article said: 

Sometimes you'll find the occasional sign posted on the beach explaining which colored flags mean what. But not always. Whoever insists upon using this dumb flag system should, at the very least, create a public safety awareness campaign:

• Put fridge magnets in every hotel room with explicit flag color definitions

• Do reminder PSAs on TV and radio during the busiest tourism seasons

• Provide a rack-card-style brochure with explicit colored flag definitions that every visitor gets handed automatically when they arrive at their hotel or condo

Maybe then beachgoers would be aware. Drunk or high spring breakers still might not.

But I'm an ADHD idea hamster. I have a much simpler, BETTER solution. I suggest they use a black flag with a symbol telegraphing danger that is so universal, anyone can understand, no matter where in the world they are from: 

Let’s be real. Does this flag not scream "DANGER"? Well, maybe not for those elitist weirdos in YALE's Skull 'n' Bones cult, but it screams danger for the rest of us normal people.

If I saw that ominous black flag flying, I'd be staying the f*ck out of that riptide-riddled water. That one simple tweak would quickly and easily communicate to beach goers that the water was unsafe. Or, maybe just a yellow flag with black lettering that literally says, "DANGER: RIPTIDES TODAY. STAY OUT OF WATER." Would that be so hard?

A "GTFO" yellow flag would suffice for the Millennials and Gen-Zers who have texted that acronym for-evah...

This warning flag obfuscation is the type of unnecessary, unforced error system that can create misunderstandings, public safety hazards, and worse, DEATH.

And this is why Au-ADHDers should be in charge of how to communicate ideas simply for the lowest common denominator of people -- you know…people like yours truly.