Confessions of the Unmedicated Mind, Volume 1: Home

By Benjamin Tomes

There have been books about ADHD before, but nothing quite like this funny ebook series.

Undiscovered author Benjamin Tomes outlines the distinct line between discovery and origin as he details a childhood impacted by ADHD in a world not yet familiar with the disorder.

Many have treated ADHD as a pandemic that sprang from nowhere, sapping the attention spans of scores of school-aged children. Nothing could be further from the truth, yet few have delved into our past to examine instances of the disorder before it was recognized by modern medicine. This humorous memoir entertains while it recounts life in the 1970's and 1980's, before anyone had ever heard of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

In his four part humorous memoir entitled Confessions of the Unmedicated Mind, Tomes provides an unprecedented firsthand account of ADHD. His take on a childhood impacted by the focus disorder and dysfunctional family is as hilarious as it is poignant, albeit not for the faint of heart. Despite home tumult and academic failure, Tomes would go on to become an award winning coach and successful teacher, providing an interesting perspective on an unlikely ascent from rural miscreant to urban legend.

Set primarily in the small towns of Northern Wisconsin, Tomes uses heavy handed humor to deliver blunt force drama drawn from his personal war on boredom. His birth to twenty-one account is broken into four key areas and the series is issued in volumes along those lines.

Volume 1: Home

Home reads like a self-written psych report, detailing family idiosyncrasies, dalliances with girls, experimentation with alcohol and meandering through life without regard; as well as a potential road to redemption. Along the way, fish are thrown at tourists, prank calls are made, children are led astray in church, a bowling alley is defiled and socially challenged relatives are antagonized. Nothing is sacred as Tomes spins a classic piece of humorous non-fiction with his true stories of bad behavior.

In vivid detail, Tomes recounts his dysfunctional childhood, the genetic roots of his ADHD, the influence of ill behaved cousins and extended family, his parent's awkward religious beliefs, and a laundry list of bad behavior, stunts, pranks, and a life heavily influenced by a chronic intolerance of boredom.

Volume 2: School, was released in February of 2014
Volume 3: Play, will be released in June of 2014.
Volume 4: Work, will be released in September of 2014.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Benjamin Tomes
• Release date: Apr 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301903634

Benjamin Tomes

My twisted path began with a baptism into weirdness and only became more ironic and bizarre with time. A study in contrasts, my roots run deep into small town dysfunction but branched out and blossomed in poverty stricken urban chaos. The oldest of three, I was born in 1972 to nomadic parents in Milwaukee. My father was an educator. He smoked Middleton Cherry cigars and was the son of the inventor of the modern lie detector test. My mother was a plant murdering housewife who issued religious damnations with frequency, and was the youngest daughter of a bowling magnate. I was raised a Quaker. My youth resonated with a pastoral tranquility. My sister threw phones and steel tipped darts. She was twice institutionalized, but to no avail. My brother quit speaking as a child and communicated through shrugs, grunts and nods. I became an extrovert with societal disconnect. I stole circus buses, burrowed ceiling tunnels at school, and violated McIntosh apples in unspeakable ways. I celebrated failure, gleefully unaware of the undiagnosed impulse control disorder I unwittingly acquiesced to. After the completion of my compulsory education, I drove my 1964 Fairlane to college but quickly returned to pursue a career in ice making. When that melted I took up civilian work building minesweepers for the Navy. When that blew up I took up late night floor cleaning. Bedraggled and disenchanted with the deceiving allure of failure I rekindled my studies with sights set on teaching disabled children; clearly a natural progression. While in pursuit of my undergraduate degree, I altercated for sport. Despite this fashionable outlet I adapted to college with an awkward gait. I wore toy fireman's helmets and became fascinated with the Schaefer Brewery. I tackled the signs of fast food restaurants, befriended a local prowler, and took part in American tackle football as the result intoxicated boasting. I was given a radio show but was forcibly removed while on air. For a time, I was sent to Kazakhstan and the former Soviet Union, but returned. I lived in the basement of a disheveled shanty where I hosted large parties, sometimes employing burlesque ideology. This practice led me to fall under the spell of a Madisonian defector in nurse's garb. We ultimately synthesized and moved into a Provincial Tudor and purchased a bulldog hybrid from an emaciated drug house and named it Schaefer. Following my Bohemian collegiate experience, I furthered the natural progression of my alabaster life and became an urban educator in the city of my birth. I developed a sharp oblivion to my surroundings, and learned I related better to the downtrodden chaos of urban decay than the Quakerian tapestry I was woven into. I thrived in my new found borough, concocting intoxicating games such as "Invalidate the Rodent" and "Kick the Black Kid". The latter became obsolete after my pupils astutely countered with their own variation entitled "Kick the White Man", which I lost in epic fashion. Our family rapidly expanded in figurative and literal terms. A 16 year old Nubian child was born to us and certificated on a piece of spiral bound notebook paper. It was followed by an alphabetical gamut of offspring. My career was executed with a piper's flair as I achieved the impossible with widespread promulgation. Celebrated in television and print media, word of my successes in the most unlikely of places traveled across the countryside like wildfire. The departure from failure that I initiated and positive publicity sat poorly with the powers that be as well as the roots of my tree, and my precedent setting work was repudiated; as was I. Disenfranchised in Milwaukee, I hitchhiked to South Florida where I danced in hurricanes and mocked them with aplomb. I took up falconry, and became quite good until developing an allergy to feathers. In my down time, I trained cage fighters. Having left work with predatory birds I took to carnivorous big game cats and mastered them as well. While my career radiated like the Florida sunshine, a large cloud began to form overhead. I became the nemesis of a pilfering Palm Beach Socialite. The aging millionaire hipster was no match for my scrambled resistance. He was branded a felon and excommunicated from his trade. His thievery however, left us in a mild state of ruin. The run of misfortune was not over. My rambunctious tendencies were stifled after severing the symmetry of my lumbar spine while carrying a bed up a flight of steps. This put an effective end to my altercating for sport, and inspired me instead to contemplate the conventionality of my existence and need for change. With a spinal column that was rendered as a functional equal to our economic viability, we returned to our home state as financial refugees. I now reside in Wisconsin, where I celebrate my escape from Fort Windstar after serving out an eight year sentence in its wheeled confines. With the wild ways of my past now impaled by a large metal bolt, I live as a model of malcontented domesticity. I spend most of my time stalking Amish families and caring for my two young children. To pass the time on a daily basis, I utilize a panel of their plush toys for heated round table discussions on how best to solicit a human vehicle who can procure paper publication of my most interesting tales.

Book preview

Foreword

Oh my god, I was so sure this guy was going to go to prison.

That’s how I was introduced to friends of a dear high school friend of mine in June of 2010, as we put the finishing touches on a twenty-year high school reunion and sat down for drinks. Her words didn’t cut like a dull Bryan Adams knife. They resonated with an element of truth. It’s hard to be deeply offended when you know better than anyone just how accurate of a description that was.

Besides, as you may come to find out, I’m quite proud that I did not go down that road. There’s a big difference between bend and break, and somehow I made it from a life spent growing up as a scrambled dreg to that of a productive citizen.

How the hell did that happen? And why would it be of any interest to others?

There’s a great chance that you and I haven’t been formally introduced, but such a need may not be pressing. There’s a great chance that you know me better than you think; if not me, someone not so different from me. I could be the boy sitting behind you in school kicking your desk, getting in trouble with the teacher, or the life of the party that you never really got to know.

I could also be your brother, father, or even the son you always wondered what the hell was wrong with. You know me, you just haven’t met me.

My friend’s words and auspicious introduction weren’t misguided. Actually, they were incredibly insightful. I was blessed to have had a lot of friends, and I think many of them spent some time worrying about whatever random path I was taking at one time or another. That said, I’m not sure how many understood how lucky I was to have avoided dying or being locked up at an early age over some level of foolishness

I didn’t grow up on the hardened streets of Urban America, and I didn’t grow up the product of a violent or broken home. Instead, I grew up in a smattering of small towns in northern Wisconsin, a seemingly benign and what might even be considered quaint place to grow up. There weren’t throngs of street gangs to lead me astray or known culprits of traditional moral erosions. I didn’t need the usual suspects of a bad crowd or mind altering drugs to walk the line between good and bad. I had boredom.

Like millions of people worldwide, I have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Of course, growing up in the 1970s and '80s, nobody knew what that was. As far as brain disorders go, ADHD is as new of a dilemma as anything we have in modern medicine and psychological issues. What’s often lost among researchers and laypeople alike is that the disorder is not new.

It has been here since the dawn of humanity. We just haven’t taken the time to look back yet.

As a disorder, ADHD is being unlocked as we speak.

Monumental finds are being made on a near daily basis, and young people are being treated in ways that people of my generation and the ones before it could only dream of. The overmedication of children is oft debated today. For some, the disorder continues to be viewed as boys being boys. For others, it’s viewed simply as the product of one’s environment, be it at home or at a dysfunctional school. Beleaguered parents, exasperated siblings and teachers threatened by an overactive child can all sleep better knowing that something can be done about it now. Be it medicine, coaching, therapy, or parental and teacher management skills, kids today have a fighting chance.

For those of my generation and the ones before it, it didn’t quite work out that way.

By some counts, as much as forty-five percent of the prison population has ADHD. For those who are not locked up, there are countless people who had lives that endured a profound negative impact because of an invisible disorder that went undiagnosed, driving their decision making and impulsive actions.

Since the identification of the disorder and the breakthroughs that have followed, much has been done to provide a sort of brain triage for beleaguered parents, exasperated teachers, and frustrated children that have caused both the former to pull their own hair out. The world of having ADHD is vastly different than when I was a child. At bare minimum, everyone involved in the child’s life has resources ranging from the Internet, mainstream media, and medical help to assist in recognizing it and working out a plan.

With so much of the attention going toward the here and now, not much has been done to look back at life before there was an identifiable reason for such things as ants-in-the-pants. I would contend that to truly understand the disorder, we need not only look forward but backward as well.

ADHD is not like cancer or some terminal disease, even if some of the off-shoot behaviors aren’t good for one’s bottom line. While scientists are getting closer to definitive tests that would allow them to verify the presence of the disorder in a physical sense, the primary indicators for it are still anecdotal observations. The overall use and value of that information has yet to be determined in full. There is no doubt in my scrambled mind that the information gained could be invaluable in treating a disorder that is as fleeting as the attention spans of those who have it.

If science has no use for it, society might. Some people dealt with it without the aid of medication, therapy, or adjustments in their environment and achieved success in their personal and professional lives. It would not take a great level of difficulty to look back at school records, talk with friends and family members, and find out what clearly worked to keep one’s disheveled focus in check, and what did not. The information is there. We’ve just not taken the time to look at it.

If that doesn’t do it for you, maybe levity will. Much of the lives of those afflicted with ADHD before there was ADHD were, if nothing else, fucking hilarious.

As is this series. Or so I hope you find it to be. That’s not to say that there’s not something to be learned from it, but, at the very least, I would suspect that one could find great amusement in my meandering through life in the perpetually dull small towns that my vagabond parents moved us to with frequency.

I found a road to redemption, albeit a winding one that took me from sleepy small towns to the urban chaos of Milwaukee and West Palm Beach. Just how does one go from perpetual boredom in the Great White North and a potential path toward prison to a highly successful urban teacher and nationally acclaimed coach?

You’re about to find out.

I had been told enough times that I should write out the stories of my youth and the dysfunction in which it was spent that I finally began to listen. For the most part, I wasn’t paying enough attention to the first few rounds of encouragement to give it much thought, though I eventually began to see the value in doing such a thing. Over time, I wrote out the seemingly endless barrage of mercurial, spastic, and inexplicable things that decorated my youth like a war vet’s uniform. Some wear medals on their letter jacket, some litter their wall with awards of high achievement, and some concoct maniacal trouble with comedic results and let that serve as their badge of honor.

The latter is the story of my youth. Here it is in all its raw glory.

I like to think that there’s not been a more extensive glimpse into the world of ADHD before, as this is as uncut as foreign porn. There are parts that will likely offend you in ways that I prefer not to address here. A lot of thought went into putting a shiny spin on my tale to fit modern day standards and things we now view as politically incorrect, and I opted against it. Suffice to say, I’d not repeat many of these things now as an adult, which is a positive change in many instances, but I can do nothing to what's already happened. Politically incorrect, insensitive, or mean, those things happened. I opted for reality in lieu of a bogus spit-shine that would falsely gloss over some of the more poignant parts of growing up with a focus disorder in rural America.

I present my tale in the theme of a psychological report, low-lighting the potential explanations for my failures as well as my successes in life, in four distinct categories. For a child to be identified as having a disability in the United States, they must demonstrate significant malfunction in two of three areas: Home, School, and their Interpersonal Relationships. For older kids, Work may be included as a separate category.

This is my story on the home-front, from birth to age twenty-one. I apologize, in advance, if you were trampled in the wake of my dysfunction or offended in the accounting of it. It wasn’t personal.

Unless you pissed me off. In those cases it probably was.

HOME

Chapter 1: The Brat Race

Most children are bathed in warm, soapy water. In my house, the little ones were bathed in weirdness. Recollecting my childhood does not elicit anxiety or negativity, but it was not normal. There’s a stark difference between dysfunctional and bad. My house blurred that line.

Even amongst homes that others may classify as being contaminated with toxic levels of dysfunctional ideology and absurdity, ours was unique. It wasn’t a home that could point a finger at rampant drug abuse or alcohol consumption for its oddities, nor could it cite a terrible breakup for its problems.

Instead, my family concocted its dysfunction through quirks, traits and personal idiosyncrasies. Our home was polluted with varying forms of insanity that were used to bludgeon each other's vulnerabilities as a weapon of choice. We didn't need trauma or substance abuse to terrorize one another. Our family proved that personalities could indeed serve as weaponry.

The chemical makeup of my parents’ relationship was noxious, corrosive and a bit ironic; at least in the early days it was. They married young, and though they attended the same high school, they did not know each other until out of school. They were both Catholic, and were both from big families with only one boy apiece in them. They were both practicing introverts who shared a mutual friend. They met following my father’s graduation from college. My mother married at nineteen, my father was twenty-two and had a degree in Education from tiny Mount Scenario College in far Northern Wisconsin.

Once married, they never argued or fought in front of their kids or anyone else for that matter. On paper, there were considerable similarities between them. Paper doesn’t always tell the story though. Whether it was that they married early and had yet to even know who they truly were, or if it was just change after the fact, they were far from carbon copies of one another. Whatever surface similarities they shared came to an abrupt end not long after they were married. My parents shared a lot of things, but how they came to their essence of strange were vastly different.

I was born on July 17th, 1972. My mother was twenty-one and had already twice miscarried, causing some concern over their ability to have children. Contrary to popular belief, I was not her third. I entered the world with a dramatic flair. Over time, this would prove to be a trend established early. I was a difficult birth. So much so, that I broke my collarbone while exiting the birth canal. This caused me to be a noisy baby, which was, if nothing else, prophetic. There would be little silence from me over the years.

Family history has been established as having a direct link to ADHD, and in terms of maternal lineage, it’s safe to say that it ran through her bloodline. My mom’s genetics may have predisposed me for the focus deprivation that I’d grow up with, but like many mothers of her time, she didn’t help matters much. Like many mothers of the era, she smoked and drank occasionally while pregnant with me. Neither had the stigma associated with it that exists today, but the impact of such behaviors certainly didn’t help quell the storm that lie within.

In November of 1973, my solitary refinement was rudely interrupted by the birth of my sister. Rude interruptions became a hallmark for her, as even from an early age, she did not handle brotherly teasing with any sort of grace or dignity.

There would be no marveling at the creation of life added to our family. Instead, I seemed to instinctually sense the years of entertainment that were now at hand and began to agitate my sister. I spent hours entertaining myself by waiting for my mother to leave the room so I could push her much faster than voluntary human participation called for in her swing, producing instant infantile hilarity.

My brother was born in April of 1975, ending the reign of terror my parents' reproductive systems would wage on the world. The birth of their third child would prove to be instrumental in skewing the gender balance of our household. The birth of my brother Brian provided a permanent accomplice in more than just the persecution of the middle child. He proved to be quiet but effective at carrying out the menagerie of evil ideas I had dwelling between my cute little ears. Even though we did not typically align ourselves with our sister, it did inadvertently provide that there were more of us than there were of them. We already outnumbered my mom. Now we could overwhelm her in triplicate.

All three of us were born while living in the sleepy town of Hartford, Wisconsin, where my dad worked as a special education teacher. My mother was twenty-four, and she was now at home with three kids. Even at an early age, all three of us were vastly different, save for our diligence. None of us ever let up on her.

Not long after my brother was born, we moved. This would become an all too familiar process for us, as my dad’s professional wanderlust took us to different parts of the state. Our first move took us to Hatley, where we’d live for nearly a year in a house with a swamp for a backyard while our home was completed. Hatley was a dump, and so was the disheveled shanty we were stuck in while in wait for the new home. My mother was a good distance from her family for the first time in her life, and I don’t think she had an easy time with it. Then again, when you have three kids in diapers and your spouse is a workaholic, I don’t think much comes easy for you.

Despite the move, my dad continued his pursuit of a double Master’s Degree in Education. His time teaching was short; it took him only a few years to figure out he preferred to administrate, and the job he took in Central Wisconsin presented him with a chance to become an assistant principal. Advancement up the professional ladder in education was not in and of itself a problem. Doing the coursework three hours away though was. It left her alone with us more than should have been allowed by law. I’m pretty sure it hit the fast forward button on my mom’s sanity.

We didn’t help matters much.

Wherever we were, we had the most energy of any of the kids within a ten mile radius. We didn’t stop moving, we never really stopped playing at any given moment, and we didn’t get along. Well, my brother and I got along with each other. Neither of us really got along with my sister.

Brian and I were inseparable. After a little over a year left alone with my sister, I was pretty excited to have him enter my world. Before long, it was clear that despite being very small and very quiet, he was the resident badass of the family.

In the spring of 1977, the home my parents were having built on the outskirts of Wausau was completed. The home would bear witness to a level of anarchic chaos in the first five years it stood that would rival that of any antebellum-built estate. My brother christened the chaos by offering the most auspicious of acts; he bit the Welcome Wagon lady.

From an early age, my brother displayed a need to bite people. He did not discriminate. From a stealth spot secured on the floor, he crawled over to the unsuspecting bringer of good tidings, coupons, and bad candy, and clamped down hard on her leg with his fangs of terror.

If that wasn’t a sign that a cloud of random evil hovered overhead, my mother would inadvertently issue her own. Not long after using a few tools from the garage to unhinge my brother from the woman’s leg, my mom accidentally dropped a playing card into the woman’s tea.

It was the Ace of Spades.

Clearly, our home was founded under a bad sign.

While I can’t say for sure, I suspect there was a rumble of thunder somewhere in the background. If not, there certainly should have been.

The home my parents had built certainly didn’t stand out as containing anything special in terms of unbridled over-activity. It was flush in the middle of a new neighborhood; modest and still unfinished. It even came with a standard issue neighborhood bully. He wielded his Neanderthal tendencies in traditional fashion. I was not well equipped to handle bullying. Undersized, somewhat sheltered and left outside on my own, I had few options at my disposal when it came to dealing with bullies. I was not an aggressive child, and stressful situations hardly elicited graceful reactions from me. My instincts were much like that found in the wild. Essentially, I froze, stood motionless as they ravaged our sandbox full of toys. You might be able to define brazen by examining young douche bags as they wandered into the yards of others and took whatever happened to grab their attention.

My response was to stand there and cry. My brother on the other hand, grew tired of their thievery. Despite being three years younger, he decided to take matters into his own hands. After they made a return trip one day to retrieve more of my beloved Star Wars action figures, he went into the garage and grabbed a baseball bat. My parents had one in the garage that they used for their softball league, and my four-year-old brother had decided to brandish it as a weapon and chase the bullies away. Their interest in stealing our Star Wars figures came to an abrupt halt.

As for us, we never really came to an abrupt halt.

My parents were not devoid of fun. In my early years, they had purchased a jukebox, which they filled with records and music from their past. Among the songs on there was an Elvis single which contained a B-Side song called, Way Down. The song, for some inexplicable reason, inspired my brother to run fast laps around our finished basement when it was playing. This continued on for a good couple of years, until one fateful day when my sprinting brother ran directly into one of the metal poles that stood ominously on each side of the long living room. In a bit of irony, his collision with the pole came as he was screaming loudly along with the chorus of the song, resulting in a haunting wail of I can feel it, which surely resonated throughout the unpaved roads of our comfortable borough.

My mother was undoubtedly tired, overworked by three budding degenerates at home and had little help with us. My dad, while well-intentioned and the antithesis of his father, was of little use while working or finishing up his post-graduate work. My brother, sister, and I were too young to know or care and weren’t very sympathetic. As a young child, Brian had learned that to override the activity level of his older siblings, he’d have to step it up a notch. It was the only way to expedite that which he coveted from my mother. Many mornings, he’d wake up before she did, walk to the refrigerator, withdraw a handful of eggs, and take the cold spheres to my mother’s bedroom. Upon entering, he’d meticulously place them where they’d wake her but not break, like a deranged Easter Bunny. He’d then utter, Eggs, Mom. Eggs.

We learned quickly that patience, grace, and smiling in the face of frustration were not among my mother’s finer qualities. This did little to deter us from hitting the nuclear button on a daily basis. At one point, my brother, who couldn’t have been older than three, was sitting on the floor of the kitchen screaming for Kool Aid. In an incident that quite accurately provided a glimpse into how things got done at our house, our persistent demands and constant running around broke her fighting spirit. They did not, however, leave her bewildered to the point of failing to put up ample resistance. While he sat there crying about his lack of Kool Aid, my mother coolly mixed up a large batch of blood red Kool Aid, walked over to the middle of the kitchen floor, and dumped it over his wispy blonde head.

While we misbehaved everywhere, the zenith of our bastardness was at the grocery store. When grocery shopping, my mother was undoubtedly distracted by trying to work within her tight budget and was sure to be there without her husband. This guaranteed a three-on-one fight between my frazzled mother and her high octane children.

I might have been young at the time, but I was old enough to know the difference between right and wrong. I also knew what was funny and was not, but had little perspective on perspective or tact. Hence, what I found to be funny wasn’t exactly ringing with laughter for my mother.

Upon entering the grocery store, we’d scatter like puppies released from a box, meandering in all different directions. Recovering us would prove to be futile. She knew trying to corral us was useless. Instead, she’d just begin shopping until we’d done our unsupervised damage. Only then would we make our way back to her cart. We knew we had to go home eventually, but would not be inclined to find her until we earned trouble in another aisle.

When we’d rejoin her, we’d find her trying to carefully select items and put them in the cart. As she did that, her immediate focus was occupied, allowing us to abuse the cart with our inability to focus. While she’d be looking intently at items she wanted, we’d put anything and everything we could find within five feet in every direction in the cart. I learned early that this was made easier by the cart being partially full. The things she intended to get would conceal that which I determined we’d need. Before long, she had three kids all doing the same thing.

With my brother in the cart just below eye level for my mom, he provided an ample decoy for me. I adeptly signaled to my brother to begin the audio attack. This drew instant retribution for him, but it allowed me to ransack the aisles with products that contained the sugary carbohydrates my speedy brain craved. Come hell or high water, I was going to attain the fuel to maintain a brain that violated the land-speed rules established for normal childhood thinking. To maintain a brain that operated