Commentary: Politics might be the link to adult-onset ADD

Son Mark was one of the first generation of kids to be diagnosed as “hyperkinetic.”

Clearly, he got a bad hand-me-down from his father’s side of the family.

In the late 1960s, hyperkinesis was the diagnosis for easily distracted kids who couldn’t sit still and focus on their schoolwork. Later it became known as ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder.

My family had no signs of behavioral problems. We were all high-achievers, getting good grades and never causing trouble. OK, I got my worst grades in conduct or deportment, depending on the school. But I always finished my work before others and needed someone to whisper with.

What kid can just sit with their hands folded on their desk and just wait? They should have let us do crossword puzzles.

I’ve long thought of myself as an efficient juggler of tasks. Sometimes an email comes along that speaks of getting older as going into one room to find one thing and being distracted by something else that sends you into another room where you get sidetracked by something else, ad infinitum, until nothing gets finished and the first step is utterly forgotten.

Not me. I’m pretty good at getting that first task done — in fact, getting all the tasks done — just not necessarily of a piece.

For instance, this morning I sat down to have breakfast, and I read an article in The Times that, before I forgot, I just had to email to several family members and friends, after which I started to play a game of Spider Solitaire on the computer before I remembered I was in the middle of my protein bar and fruit compote.

Breakfast finished, I went to work on my new book about what it means to get your affairs in order, but I decided I really needed to write my grandkids because Jan said that some of them were planning not to vote as “a political statement” of disassociation from the process and disregard for both candidates. So I ended up writing everyone I know an email about how important it is to vote, and then I went back to work on my book, which mentions property deeds and never to dispose of them.

And I remembered that Cheryl told me the house her family lived in before her parents’ divorce was vacant and in a shambles and last sold at auction for one-fourth of its “location, location, location” value because title couldn’t be established. So I went to Zillow, copied its sales history and emailed my property manager to ask how a title could have become so complicated since 2013 that it couldn’t be safely purchased.

Then I went back to writing my book, and I realized that one of my own affairs wasn’t in good order so after I wrote an email about that, I noticed that replies to my email about voting had started to come in, and one was from the alumnae director of my high school, which made me stop to check and see if I’d updated my ’57 roster lately because our 60th reunion is next year, and would it be cheaper to do it at school or at Diane’s?

The money made me remember to let Cheryl know that if she contributes to the national political party, it could be put it into the presidential campaign rather than the Senate or House campaigns. Cheryl thinks that, like Mark, she had ADD as a kid and still does, and since she isn’t related to me by blood, I joked in that email that I’d been pretty distracted all morning and maybe she does get that ADD from me.

And then I thought about those seniors and wondered if ADD could be acquired in later life, and I researched it on the Internet, and it can be!

And that’s when I got the idea for this article because ADD is of common interest and I’d start with how Mark got it from his patrilineal side — no symptoms on the distaff side — and I’d like to finish this piece, but I need to get back to my . . .

Oh, look! A chicken!

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LIZ SWIERTZ NEWMAN lives in Newport Beach.