Episode 056: Did I break it?

Isabelle and David reflect on going on 3 years of working on this podcast (note: this is now are 4th year working on it! WHAT?! WE LOVE YOU!) and how much the common way of interacting with inanimate objects is “did I break it?” And when we don’t, the realization of: “it’s more better!” Thinking about all the shiny neurodivergent folks gleaming around the planet, the power of your suggestions and ideas for shaping this podcast, and things we’ve learned as adults that changed the game (see: logos, gas station hacks, successfully getting everything for a recipe at the grocery store).

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David and Isabelle reflect on this being their 3rd anniversary of recording the podcast. David describes how he used to walk to Isabelle and Bobby’s place past a McDonald’s every time to record, mulling over what they would talk about or what they could do. But this McDonald’s had a lit awning but was also closed a bunch of the time, and was filled with the most awkward sidewalk and road configuration so you need to do a lot of things to find out they are closed. David would like to barter, somehow.  On Isabelle’s end she remembers getting the table ready after putting their kid down for bed, and getting excited to have a guest over. Almost everything is improved by snacking, but also less ice, is better. The two ponder about what to talk about, or going meta with the podcast. David wants to go there because it has been so cool to see what happened since we started this. We started wanting to remove the paywall from good information about ADHD, reduce suffering. The letters and emails we’ve gotten, the reviews we’ve seen posted, David is constantly in awe and reminded that sometimes people hear something we’ve talked about and it makes them feel less alone or more seen. It’s so cool that it’s happening so much. And he’s sitting with ADHD in that he doesn’t respond. “This person is amazing, their heart is true, and man, I need to sit down and write an honest letter that matches the energy.” Isabelle is trying so hard to respond. David cries and wants to respond, and here is his verbal accommodation to responding. It’s really incredible and rewarding in ways he wouldn’t have thought. For Isabelle, it relates a delayed gratification time, having a roughly regular way of interacting with David is so rewarding.  For a long time in person, this was the lifeline to getting to see each other and it is delightful and brought me so much, and then she turns to Bobby and goes “have you listened to the podcast?” Because they actually use this in their every day life. Let’s figure that out. In terms of the immediacy of what this means, every time she goes to listen and edits old episodes, it’s delightful, and then she gets something from it. And then she sits and edits and gets better and faster and it’s not her chosen profession, so she’s picked up a lot as she’s gone. And then she feels the growing load of never putting this out and it’s fine as long as there’s an episode up. And then we get a review, or a letter, or an email, and it’s like holy flying pieces of flaming something. And then it's a conversation. You’re listening on the other end of this. And she listens to the other end of this, she’s just listener, too. It makes her think of the first “X-Men” movie and Professor X in his machine, Cerebro, and seeing all of the shiny people all around the world. And David names, we can struggle with premeditation, and not rehearsing, or scripting anything, but these are very real conversations that can feel scary and vulnerable because they’re not here. There are certain topics and suggestions that lots of people have written in and we’ve been so excited to cover them and maybe do it. It’s really helpful if people tell us “give us more information on x” and that gives us structure, or like help me with littles, and how do we sit here and deal with partners, how do you reclaim a life when you learn you’re neurodivergent into your later adulthood?  What might be really great, and maybe do a conversation around them, there are no capital A answers, but there are lots of answers to these things. We should rope in more people so we have more ways of talking about it, both from parents and non-parents, and more of a Q&A roundtable - and maybe we make it an event, a virtual, zoom type things. David gets balloons no matter what. On Isabelle’s scale of decorations, the top one is little paper accordions made of tissue paper, loves the opening of party decorations and then she closes them and they are flat. David has kept some of those up because why would you take them down. It’s like a 3D animation, now it’s flat and now it’s slowly getting not flat. Am I going to break it? It’s more better!  This sums up half of Isabelle’s interactions with inanimate objects. Giant learning moments of things you didn’t know until way late and it changed the game: David was in his late 20s when he learned how to spell kitchen, and he got it and it was funny, but he did learn how to spell that word. That’s a hard word! Isabelle’s kid is in that ‘teaching himself to read’ kind of state, and describing the difference between “to,” “too,” and “two” —try explaining that to a kid. And David thinks the English language is needlessly insane and he hates it. And in case anyone doesn’t know, Isabelle sits there and types out the show notes. The word she has never once spelled accurately—not to brag, but she was the 3rd place winner of the Polish National Alliance spelling bee (which is in English)—she never spells accommodate. There are too many consonants in “kitchen.” And there’s so many words David can’t spell that don’t matter, but if you have to do it every day. Neurochemistry makes sense—he can spell amygdala - “Amy G Dala.” He realized excitement and enthusiasm is an accommodation for anxiety. You can choose to label the experience differently. David was prepping for an event and he was chomping at the bit to go on and then he started jumping up and down and shadowboxing and he's doing these moves and all of a sudden, all of that pent up anxiety was embodied into excitement in his body. That’s something he's done again and again in life. Every once in a while, he will think of something he wants to cook, goes to the store, gets all that he needs, and then prepping things-and that’s some sexiness right there. He feels so good when he does that. This makes Isabelle think of porn for housewives (so sexist)-novelty books—and you open this up and it is pictures of very generically handsome men and women of all stripes just doing various household tasks, the word bubbles are saying things like “I scheduled all the kids’ doctor’s appointments and picked up dinner” and it's just a task, and what David just described all those sequences, preparation, initiating and follow through — very sexy for an ADHD brain. And David has learned he has to have to have all the ingredients have to fit on the post it note and he can’t do any other shopping and it can only be to get ingredients for that meal. And if he adds more, he'll get 35%-95% of it—has to be a targeted mission. That makes Isabelle think of how to try to make gf baking ten years before there were mixes, and the kinds of things she forced herself to eat, because she worked so hard on them. It totally blew Isabelle’s mind that logos had more to them than just letters—she didn’t learn this until this last year. And it makes fun to look at, and you realize how much work put people into it and you have to be very talented. Two things she learned within the last five years: how to remember which side of the car the gas tank is on? You can look at the little gas tank icon on your dash and there’s an arrow next to it, and it points to the side of the car you have your gas tank on. Also, most gas stations have hoses that if you lift them up over your car and pull which reach to the other side. The gas dispensing is designed to be pulled so it can reach the other side of the car. There’s a weird doodad on top because it’s designed to go up and around. David did not know and he’s terrified, because he has dumb person strength. If the door is locked, and he doesn't know it, he’s breaking the lock — he’s scared he’s going to break the hose and gas is pouring everywhere and everyone is mocking him and then…he’d keep the hose. Isabelle knows this is true of Costco and other major chains because she has done it, but I guess use your discretion?

David’s Wonder Woman references:

Scene at gas station from Zoolander (Part at gas station starts at 1:47, but this whole sequence gives you context)
Porn for Women (so sexist) 

Isabelle and David's Tips they learned way late in adulthood: 

Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez

Technical Support by: Bobby Richards

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