ADD people are often good with numbers. Colin liked to tell his clients that ADD wasn’t all bad. In fact, when Colin dealt with a new client, he made sure they knew that ADD had a good side. Lots of important, creative people have had ADD — probably. Joanie’s face lit up when Colin told her that Einstein had ADD, as did Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy, plus guys like Beethoven and Stevie Wonder.
Joanie had thought she could handle ADD by herself. She bought a smart phone, the type that keeps track of your schedule and gets e-mail and stores all your phone numbers and can synch up with your desktop computer.
So far so good, right?
Wrong. Because Joanie had a dozen alarms going off to remind her of stuff every hour. So, in a few days, she learned just to ignore the alarms because they hammered her all the time. Then she started leaving the phone at home. Like it’s gonna do her any good there.
So with Joanie, the first thing Colin did was to cancel out all her alarms. Every last one. Then they started from scratch. “What’s really important here?” Colin asked.
“Well, that I take my meds,” Joanie said.
“Good, let’s input that alarm. Anything else?”
“My mom, she needs her medication, too, and I have to give it to her every day.”
“Okay, put that in, too. Now let’s just stop there and see how it works.”
“Just two alarms?”
“Just two,” Colin said.
Joanie’s mom was really ill, she couldn’t care for herself. Or the things around her. She owned these Hummel figurines. If you’ve never seen them, they’re kinda kitsch, but look ’em up on eBay and you’ll see they’re worth a lot. The ones in Joanie’s house were from the 1940s. Worth over five thousand dollars each because they were in beautiful shape. Pristine. So a few left with Colin over a couple of weeks. They were never missed.
Joanie feels much better. She looks better, too. Now that she’s not so frenzied, she has time to groom herself. She told Colin a guy she works with asked her out. Colin was not surprised.
Gupta had another story altogether. He was smart enough to get through high school and college, even with ADD, but keeping a job was another matter. The poor slob lost three jobs simply by forgetting to show up for work.
Before he got fired from his last job, he started dating one of the secretaries, Betsy. She was hot. Five foot eight, auburn hair, big green eyes, high cheekbones with a sprinkle of freckles, and a figure that would give myocardial infarction to a moose.
Betsy liked Gupta, but she didn’t realize that she was marrying someone with ADD. Gupta would do things that would set Betsy off. Like, he’d decide that their dining room needed painting, start the job, then realize he needed more paint and go to the mall.
Problem was, he wouldn’t come back for the rest of the day. He would just lose track of time. Betsy was fuming when, at nightfall, Gupta finally showed up.
“What am I, his mother? I gotta look out for him every day?” she screamed at Colin.
In this kind of situation, Colin had to counsel both of them, together and separately. First, Colin talked to them as a couple. Let them air their feelings. Then Colin spent some time with Betsy. Colin offered to drive her someplace — the house, with its clutter and unpainted walls, was stifling her. She really appreciated his sensitivity. Plus, Colin knew this really cool motel.
After that, Gupta and Betsy seemed much better. Colin collected a check from Gupta every week for helping him get organized. And Colin still hooked up with Betsy at the motel afterwards.
See? Everyone’s a winner.
Now Clarice was a different kind of problem. If ADD exists on its own, that’s one thing. But when you couple it with other problems, it can be dangerous.
Clarice was thirty-six, lived alone, had an okay body with a plain face. Limp brown hair. No family in town. So Clarice was pretty much on her own. She had a nice house, off the always-busy Route 140. Far enough away you couldn’t hear the constant traffic. She had expensive furniture, oil paintings on the wall. That first day she gave him the tour, took him to the garage. Colin saw a Bugatti sports car.
Unbelievable. The Bugatti had a turbo-charged V12 engine, it could go zero to sixty in about four seconds. Top speed over 200 mph. Who knew how much the thing was worth? A million? Two? Colin had always wanted to drive a Bugatti. Too bad hers wasn’t running, hadn’t been driven in years. Colin figured to make that car a priority.
Apparently Clarice didn’t have to work. This might have been a good thing, but really it wasn’t. A job gets you out of the house, gives your day-to-day life a built-in routine. It’s harder to coach someone without a position.
Speaking of positions, Clarice knew a lot of them, as Colin found out on that first day. Still, she’d hired him to do a job, to help her. Colin just had to figure out how.
It took him awhile to see it, but Clarice was bipolar. Some days she’d be a tiger, ready to get it on. They’d wrestle in the bed, then take on her finances, her overdue credit-card bills, her late mortgage payments. Those were fantastic days. They even called a tow truck for the Bugatti, made out a list of things the car needed. She took the list to the dealership, all on her own. Colin felt proud of her. He could hardly wait to drive that car into the sunset. Beep-beep-’n’-yeah!
Other days he’d show up and she couldn’t get out of bed, hadn’t showered in a week. All the shades in her house were drawn. The first time, it was creepy — Colin thought she’d died.
Colin told all his clients to take one day at a time. Like the day of Clarice’s job interview. It was a busy day — the repair shop had just dropped off the Bugatti, she had to mentally and physically prepare for her first job interview in years, and she was a mess. Terrified, actually. Colin helped to calm her, told her it was all going to be fine.
“No, it isn’t. You say that, but it won’t be fine, Colin, I know it.” She sobbed.
“Tell me what you need help with.”
“Everything.”
“Okay, one thing at a time.”
“I don’t have time. I need to do my hair and get my dry cleaning and print out my resume.”
“How ’bout if I get your dry cleaning?”
She looked at him through the tears. “You’d do that?”
“Of course.” Colin kissed her hand, then her lips. “Anything, you know I’d do anything for you.” And for the Bugatti. How often does a guy get a car like that? Clarice had no way to trace him. Colin wasn’t his real name, she only had his cell-phone number, and if the cops tried to get him through that they’d find it was a burner, disposable. By that time, Colin and the Bugatti would be gone, gone, gone.
He was heading out when her phone rang. Colin picked it up for her. Some woman, saying she was Clarice’s mother, demanding to talk to Clarice. Clarice rolled her eyes but took the call. From across the room Colin could hear the voice, cracking and screeching through the phone. Clarice grimaced at Colin. He smiled at her. Then she remembered her mother was talking, giving her advice she didn’t want, telling her things she already knew. Clarice tuned her out long before she hung up the phone. But she still looked pretty agitated.
Colin shrugged on his jacket. “Who’s that?”
“My mom. God, that bitch is out to destroy me. Sorry, I usually let the machine pick it up when you’re over.”
“Well, I hope you didn’t miss anything important.”
She snorted. “You kidding? Everything’s important to her. She’s got nothing to do all day but lie on a couch, eat candy, watch her stocks go up, and think of things to call me about.”