Scatter Plot

T.w.e.l.v.e

All of this hype about fidget toys, people bagging on them and then those who are way to enthusiastic...I'm pretty neutral. I think they're cool, considering they are just toys. I personally think they're fun to play with, but even as a teenager with ADHD, I don't need it. Why should I spend ten dollars on something at spins, when I found a pen on the floor at school and I can take it apart and put it back together? It's way more entertaining than something that just...spins. Now I know a lot of fidget toys are for sensory and, well...fidgeting, but most people who need to fidget get by pretty well with their surroundings. I play with my pencils, and I have actually come up with some pretty cool pen tricks. I also love paperclips, I interlock them and they are so amusing to try to get undone. Another good cheap fidget is a rubber band, bands if you take pleasure in shooting them across the room at annoying kids... I may or may not have personal experience.

My point is, you don't have to go broke buying fidget toys. Yes, they may be a cool trend, and they actually do work for fidgeting, but what else is jewelry for? I certainly do not where bracelets for decorations, I wear them for playing with. They are easy to hide in plain sight, and are cheap. I wear my grandmother's wedding band that she gave me, and it's definitely not for sentiment...it's because I love spinning it across desks and watching as people scramble to get it for me. It's like playing fetch, and people are more willing to find it for me when I mention it was my grandmother's. Thank goodness none of my friends I know in person know about this book...

My dad is severely ADHD like me. He has a desk job, I don't know how, he tells me he's dead inside and I'm starting to believe him. He told me that pretty much everyone in the office has some sort of fidget toy on their desk, except for him... his boss came over one day and asked him about it.

"I thought you needed fidget toys?" He asked my dad. Dad shrugged.

"My people played with fidget toys before fidget toys were cool. We used pens, and sticky notes. You only got a fancy toy if you went to therapy or your parents actually realized you have ADHD...my parents were also ADHD, so they didn't see it, they saw me as normal." That pretty much shut him down. It sounded like he gave him the "back in my day" lecture that we all know and love. 

My favorite fidget toy by far is my phone. No, it's not some fancy IPhone...I have a slide phone. You know, the bricks that slide open to reveal the keyboard, but if that doesn't work you have to input the letters through the stiff keypad that you've never touched. I have gotten the keyboard super loose from me constantly sliding it, and it is really fun the slide back and forth, especially when I annoy my friends. 

I mentioned this in the first chapter, but I click my pen a lot. I honestly can't help it, it's completely unconscious, and just happens. Half the time I'll be staring off into space, I look back, and all of my friends are glaring at me.

"What?" I ask.

"Darling, do I need to take your pen away?" One of my friends will say in a very snide voice.

My hand freezes, and I glare at her. I'm tempted to hold it up to her ear and click it even faster, but she's my ride home and I don't wanna walk.

"Sorry." I resign. I'm sick and tired of rolling over and begging for forgiveness when I do something that might be considered annoying. It's how I focus. Half the time if I'm reading, I'll read to the clicks of the pen to keep me in focus. When someone (said annoying friend) interrupts my clicking because she "can't focus" it throws off everything. I don't do class work anymore. It's for reasons like this, it just can't handle it. Someone will distract me, and suddenly my thoughts are a mile a minute, taking in every speck of dust on my desk, or every piece of paper on the ground. Now my thoughts are like this normally, but it's even worse when I'm interrupted while actually trying to focus. Of course this creates bigger problems with my grades, then even worse problems when suddenly my friends are judging me because my test scores suck.

"I got a 38/40 on the Gov test! What did you get Christine?" Emily will ask.

"36/40, not bad. Rachel, what about you?"

"...uhh...I got a 17/40." They give me looks of sympathy, which causes me to quickly make a comment to hide my embarrassment. "But that's way better then what I was expecting." I scoff, giving them a grin. It's little comments that make me hate school. I've done it my whole life, I come in last place, and I write it off like it wasn't important to me, I didn't try, or its better then I expected. But honestly, it hurts. It hurts because it was important. I honestly tried to study, I just couldn't focus with people texted me and noises in the other room sounding my interesting. And it never is what i expected. I want a good grade. I try, I really do, I just never seem to try good enough in the eyes of everyone else. My teacher pulled me aside and asked how I felt I was doing in the class.

"Everything is fine, I'm just a bad test taker." I would brush off. Now this wouldn't be so bad if we didn't have quizzes every day.

"Is there any reason why, any reason we can fix?" She asked. No...medicine might fix it, but I don't want to try it. I don't use my ADHD as an excuse much either because I know it's my fault I don't want to try it.

"No." And that is how I never get help in every situation where I need it. 

The moral behind this whole chapter...please try to be a little more understanding. I know a lot of people think that ADHD is a myth, it's just an excuse, but until you've lived inside my brain for at least a day without going a tiny bit crazy, you have no right to judge me and my clicky pens. You have no right to take them away, because I bought them. Just try to tune out our clicky pens and our fidget toys. Though you think it's annoying, at least you have the option to tune things out. You have no idea how many times I've been on the verge of an anxiety attack in the middle of class because I can't read my paper because of talking or movement or the annoying amount of color coded notes you take. Seriously just pick a color! I have to leave my table group during notes and sit all by myself so I can focus, and it's still not enough. I am constantly tempted to leave the class so I can breathe for a second and not have all those distractions. It's exhausting and claustrophobic. So ya, the fidgets help us, but don't go broke on them. And other peeps, don't judge our home made fidgets because we actually need them.