A Tourist in the Here and Now: Decades of Annoying Others with My ADD

By Garrison Walters

Garrison Walters has ADD as well as ODD, OCD and IRD (Introverted-Reclusive Disorder - he made this one up).He expects to be an easy winner on the new TV show, America's Got Disorders.Walters begins this autobiography by mentioning that his dull-witted ancestors were forced to emigrate to the US from seventeenth century Germany in the little-known "boring people clearances" (Langweillervolkenabstanden). Fortunately, the presence of a Welsh grandmother means he has "a 25 percent chance of not being totally uninteresting."People with ADD, Walters says, struggle because there's a manic monkey in the brain's control center who can take the "ADDled" out of the the here and now and into the whenever and whatever. This can occur at any moment--even when the victim is talking. The author sketches a childhood that includes a stressed mother who he believes carried a bottle of chloroform in her purse, "just in case." He was a terrible student who refused, on principle, to do homework (though he isn't sure what the principle is). The only time he got an A was in a math class where the teacher somehow made friends with the manic monkey. Later, though, "like water seeking its own level," he reverted to barely deserved Cs.Walters stumbled forward to graduate school and then to jobs in higher education as a teacher and administrator. In the process, he barely avoided being sent to the salt mines of communist Romania. After seven decades with The Disorder," Walters offers many insights and useful strategies for coping -- though he acknowledges that his surefire solution for domestic happiness with ADD, "marry a shrink," may not be practical for everyone. The author concludes with the observation that autobiography - undertaken at any age - can be of enormous value in understanding and dealing with life's challenges.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 179048278X
• ISBN13: 9781790482788
• Release Date: January 2019
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 333 Pages
• Weight: 1.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 0.8" x 7.0"