Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Something was wrong with me.
I was always “in a daze.” I couldn’t sit still. Long before I was eventually diagnosed with the most acute form of attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder, I was just “hyper.”
Although we now understand that ADHD is a common mental neurodevelopment issue that affects millions of children, I was diagnosed as “bad.” My mother tried to combat my hyperactivity with diet, forbidding my sisters and me from eating anything that contained Red Dye No. 5 or sugar (except on Fridays, when I could choose between a roll of Life Savers or a pack of Chiclets). In fifth grade, I spent months in the Harriot household’s version of juvenile house arrest when I was caught tracing my mother’s name on an interim report that described me as “smart but have trouble following directions.” The third deacon-in-command at church nicknamed me the “absent-minded professor.”
And then there were the coats.
Coats were the bane of my childhood existence. I always lost them. I left them on church pews, in cars, and especially at school. And because coats are the most expensive part of a kid’s wardrobe, I have received more dressing-downs from my mom about coats than anything except my propensity to forget to pull the garbage can to the curb on trash day. If there is a heaven for jackets, it is almost certainly filled with the misplaced winterwear purchased by Dorothy Harriot. I always, always lost my coat.
So, in fifth grade, when I begged my mother to buy me a “goosedown” — a feather-filled ski jacket with removable sleeves that had become the latest fashion–of course she gave me a lecture about how I’d have to suffer frostbite and hypothermia for the next two winters if I lost that puffy coat. The day my mother…
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