Mike Doyle's Open Salon Blog

Why Open Conferences Are Danger Zones for ADHDers

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:10:44 -0400

A version of the following appeared on Chicagosphere on 10/29/09.

Today, I walked out of Community Media Workshop's Communicamp open conference. It wasn't for lack of wanting to stay in my seat and spend the day with the cognescenti of the Windy City's media and blogging worlds. But how do you remain at an event where the rules of the road seem almost aimed at making someone with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder--like me--feel as out of place as possible? Here's why open conference don't work for ADHDers...and how to change that.

The daylong Communicamp (still going on as a I wrote this) was billed as an "unconference" or open conference. Instead of discussing top-down topics in fusty meeting rooms, today's event grouped people in a circle to propose and defend discussion topics, schedule breakout sessions, choose the length of each session, and keep each session on time. In other words, Communicamp participants were expected to plan and manage the day's conference extemporaneously, making instantaneous decisions about programming, priority, and time management.

Less than 15 minutes into the opening presentation by conference manager Jean Russell, one increasingly painful question kept broadcasting itself through my mind: Has anyone who organized this conference ever met someone with ADHD?

As I wrote recently on my personal blog, Chicago Carless, the things Communicamp expected of its participants are exactly the things people with ADHD find hardest to accomplish without outside help. The brains of people with ADHD are neurologically hardwired to begin to shut down when so-called executive thought functions are required of us. These functions include common tasks non-ADHDers find simple and easy like identifying priorities, assessing relative importance, and most especially estimating and managing time.

Suffering through someone else's slow, plodding pace is no picnic, either, when the Ferrari brain of ADHD kicks in and readies you to race ahead to the punchline of any presentation. As Russell spent the hour from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. methodically introducing the concepts of the open conference step by step by step, it was all the ADHDer in me could do to not dissolve into a puddle of flop sweat.

I have no doubt most others in the room had no quarrel with Russell's frequent admonitions to "take responsibility for your conference experience," "choose the length of your own group discussions," and "keep track of time on your own." Yet I also have no doubt I wasn't the only person in the room feeling left out by the day's DIY logistical parameters.

As 10:00 a.m. and the start of the day's first breakout sessions drew nearer, I leaned to the person sitting to my right and said, "Maybe what we really need is a breakout session on advance planning." To my surprise, she and her neighbor laughed and agreed with me. A participant sitting within earshot to my left chimed in next, mocking Russell with a sotto voce, "I guess 'everything will just happen as it is supposed to happen,'" which generated additional chuckles from her side of the circle.

It's never a good thing when you begin to lose your audience so early into an event like this, and I know Russell (who is both an accomplished coach and good at what she does) and everyone at CMW meant well with today's conference. I am in fact very grateful to Workshop vice-president Gordon Mayer for facilitating my attendance at today's event. And I know that great discussions are taking place at Communicamp at this very moment that I look forward to learning about. I wish I could have stuck around.

However, and it's a big however, today's conference was no place for an unprepared ADHDer. As I wrote on Carless about the plight of us ADHDers:

"Often we hear from colleagues, friends, and family that we should "try harder" to focus on the task at hand--after all, they tell us, when we really put our mind to our work, we zero in like a laser. There's usually little headway to be made in explaining that no amount of trying harder can overcome a prefontal cortex wired to shut down the moment a task requiring executive thought functions occurs. Or that our occasional ability to hyperfocus on work is actually a symptom of ADD--the same symptom that more frequently leads us to watch Netflix, listen to iTunes, or play Xbox for eight-hour stints without coming up for air...

Those of you reading this with normal brains have absolutely no idea how to identify with the last [paragraph] I've written. Right now, you're scratching your heads and wondering if I'm kidding. Meanwhile, those of you with ADD/ADHD are nodding in agreement. It's a gap in understanding that often leaves ADDers feeling like we're living in a separate world, without the vocabulary to adequately explain to outsiders the all-encompassing nature and pernicious tenacity of the disorder we fight on a minute-by-minute basis."

It's the same feeling I got when Russell told me point blank that neither she nor any other of the conference organizers would be helping participants keep track of time throughout the day. That comment, in answer to my question about how those present were supposed to keep simultaneous ad hoc breakout sessions on track, was akin to telling someone with ADHD to "try harder."

By the end of the opening presentation, I felt totally demoralized and, frankly, fearful of my ability as someone with ADHD to make it through the next seven hours of the free-form, personally time-managed "unconference" without any aid whatsoever from the facilitator. That's not to say open conferences are by definition dangerous places for ADHDers. But there's a level of logistical support that must be present to ensure that people with ADHD don't feel excluded, as I felt this morning.

The fact is, it's the responsibility of an event facilitator to facilitate--to make sure the event is designed and run so that all participants have the ability to take part. ADHDers need structure to get through events like these, and it's an absolute necessity that better time- and priority-management cues--or at least clues--be provided the next time someone holds an open conference in Chicago, to make sure everyone can feel comfortable joining the conversation.

Calling out timepoints at a daylong event would do nothing to take away from the central, crowd-sourced nature of an open conference like Communicamp. Neither would using email or web tools in advance to manage the process of seeking, combining, prioritizing, and scheduling the day's topics.

The latter suggestion, in particular, would have eliminated a great deal of confusion and stress that was widely apparently in the room this morning as I experienced the process unfold, via paper and marker, in real time. It would also have saved a lot of time and reduced the ADHDer sweaty-palms quotient.

In the meanwhile, I heartily suggest anyone planning a future open conference inform themselves about ADHD and the challenges that many people in their audience will face simply by sitting down in the room. Here are some great places to start:

ADDitude Magazine
Tara McGillicuddy's My ADD / ADHD Blog
Edward Hallowell and Melissa Orlov's ADHD & Marriage and Hallowell's own ADHD resources
Jennifer Koretsky's The ADD Business Owner
Erin Moore's So I Married an ADDer (Koretsky's life partner)
The thought-provoking personal journey of Jeff's A.D.D. Mind
The ADD public forums ADHD Message Boards and ADD Forums; and
The membership organization, Children & Adults with ADD (CHADD).

Who knows, a little-self assessment may be in order, too. You can check your own suspected ADHD symptoms with these web-based self-tests:

The World Health Organization ADHD symptom checklist (a highly accurate predictor of ADHD)
The Dr. Daniel Amen self test
The Jasper/Goldberg ADD screening;
and The ADDittude Magazine self test.

And if you do decide to hold an open conference, best of luck. Be prepared. And remember, ADHDers in the room will thank you to not look at them like they're crazy...for simply asking the time.

Handyman

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:10:04 -0400

The following appeared on Chicago Carless on 10/13/09.

"Don't worry, I've done this before and they almost always call," said Nick, announcing his decision to leave his number for our waitress. Overly Frank and I were less than eager to witness the passive-aggressive, likely-to-go-down-in-flames example of heterosexual courtship. We were more immediately curious as to why we were staring into yet another complimentary cookie sundae that had just been plopped on our table.

The same thing happened the last time Frank and I ate at R.J. Grunt's, the mother restaurant of Chicago themed-eatery juggernaut Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, a week before. We assumed the previous free dessert was the work of the waiter who came up to us to say hi after recognizing us both from Bear411. This time, the host answered out quizzical gazes. "We bring cookie sundaes for every person who eats here for the first time," he told us. "That's why we ask if you've been here before when we seat you."

That made sense. I've loved Grunt's burgers and malts for years, but on our prior visit I remembered Frank telling the waitress it was his first time. This time, it was Nick's turn to be a newbie.

"I knew you'd come in handy," I told him.

"People say that to me all the time," Nick replied.

I met the 25-year-old Cincinnati expat on the 'L' one evening in late June. He noticed I was using a 3G iPhone and came over to show me his 3GS. From zero to 60 words per minute in no time flat, he launched into an instant conversation about tech specs, how much he'd liked his first two months in the Windy City, and whether the Taste of Chicago was still open that day. I did my best to ignore his lack of a left hand while I tried to figure out whether he was coming on to me. Given his rapid-fire choice of subject matter, I had a feeling he was a fellow ADDer.

The quarter hour Nick spent trying to decide between two hamburgers at Grunt's left little room for ADD doubt. "If you don't make up your mind soon," I growled at the 15-minute mark, "you're gonna lose your other hand."

"How did you lose the first one?" Frank asked.

"Bar fight," Nick lied.

"Birth defect," I said as I closed Nick's menu. "But Nick likes to make up alternative stories to see what he can get people to believe. He had Chris thinking he lost his hand in a sword fight."

"Sorry, guys," Nick apologized. "I'm not usually so indecisive." I'd eaten with Nick in restaurants before. How he managed to get that sentence out with a straight face I'll never know. "It's just that our waitress is so hot. Did you see her?"

The new boyfriend and I just stared at the Cincinnatian without saying a word.

"Oh, right," Nick finally clued in. "Well trust me, she's pretty."

She was. Pretty busy. Pretty older. And if I bet money on these sort of things, pretty much out of Nick's league.

Nick went on. "I'm gonna leave her my number." You have to love the persistence of single straight guys.

"I thought you hated women," I asked.

"Not all women," Nick replied. "Just the ones who've burned me in the past and the ones who never call me back and the ones who lie to me. Like a lot of the women in Lincoln Park." Nick hasn't been a Chicagoan long enough to know the word, Trixies. "You know, social climbers. Back stabbers." He went in for the kill. "Bitches."

Frank opened his mouth as if to start speaking then closed it just as quickly. Like a carp coming to the surface to gasp for air, I've come to know it as Frank's trademark expression for signifying speechlessness.

Nick went on. "Now our waitress, she's not like that. I'm sure of it. So I'm gonna leave her my number. Not directly, since she's busy here at work. But I'll write it on my check when we leave."

Uh-huh. Nick's edgy, lovelorn diatribe seemed the verbal version of a crooked wig, so Frank and I just left it alone and continued with our dinner. I had a feeling Frank was hoping Nick's ADD would kick in and he'd forget to pass his love note. I, on the other hand, sharpened my inner pencil and leaned in a little closer to Nick to make sure I took accurate notes.

When the unexpected dessert came, Nick didn't let me down. He looked right at the target of his affections and asked, "Honey, can we have separate checks?"

"It's not that I want a girlfriend," Nick told us as he wrote down his name and number. "I really just want a relationship for the evening. It's easier that way."

"Do you think that's all she's going to want, too?" I asked.

"We'll see," Nick replied. "Fingers crossed."

Frank and I wished him luck. "Now," I said, "let's get the hell out of here before she reads that thing."

As the three of us headed up Clark Street back to Frank's house, I had to ask. "So Nick," I said, "what makes you so sure she's going to call? You know, for my blog audience?"

"Hey, it's almost always worked before," Nick replied as if he were stating the obvious. "Sexy babes like that always want a piece of the good stuff."

I didn't have to turn my gaze in his direction to know that Frank was rolling his eyes. I continued to press. "But are you sure you've covered all the bases?" I had a reason for asking. I knew there was one small thing Nick was overlooking.

"Yes, all the bases, man," he replied in the coolest tones he could muster. "All the bases."

If it hadn't been for Nick's ongoing air of douchebaggery glee, I would have taken far less pleasure in my following words.

"OK," I said. "But since the waitress didn't actually see you write your number down..." I paused to watch Frank's eyes light up. Nick still couldn't see where I was headed. "...out of the three of us," I continued, "how will she know you're the one who left it?"

Nick's face made an almost audible thud as it hit the pavement. "Well, um, wait a second...," he stammered, before quickly realizing there was only one possible course for his reaction to take. "Oh...dammit!" he yelled into the Lincoln Park evening. "Dammit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!"

"What are you gonna do?" I said to Nick. My question was meant as consolation, but he took me at my word.

"Well, do I think I should go back there and tell her it was me?" he asked. "I think I should go back. You think? Yeah, I think I should go back."

"Don't you dare," Frank warned as Nick started to turn around. "Michael and I have to eat there, you know. Don't embarrass us any further than absolutely necessary."

"I guess all I need to do is come with a title for my blog post now," I said while Nick smirked in my general direction.

"Give it some time," Frank suggested. "I mean, I know you have your punch line now, but judging by the baseline of his actions thus far, aren't you just a little curious to see what else Nick might be capable of before the evening's over?"

"Well," I said to them both. "If nothing else, I probably should hold off on the blog post until we see whether the waitress calls or not. It's only fair to give Nick the benefit of the doubt."

"No, man," Nick moaned. "I totally screwed this up. She's not gonna call. She's just not. Fuck."

"Now you don't know that," said Frank. "Actually, she might call. Didn't your check have the free sundae on it? If the waitress remembers you were the new guy tonight, then when she sees the sundae comped on your check-"

Nick didn't wait for Frank to finish. "Yes. Yes! It was on my check!" Nick exclaimed. "The sundae was on my check! Oh, thank God. That's how she'll know it's my number on there. That's how she'll know it's me! Hurray! See, man, all the bases! I knew it! I'm in!"

Nick hurried on ahead while Frank and I slowed down to shake our heads. And then the cherry hit the top of the sundae. "Oh my God, Frank," I exclaimed. "He's skipping."

Frank and I let Nick have his moment. As time eventually did tell, we knew the waitress wouldn't call, but no matter. We were too engrossed in the manic display unfolding before our eyes. As Nick continued to happily hoot and holler over an event that any rational person would never expect to come to pass, Frank and I couldn't help but feel a sense of awe. After all, we knew we were listening to something never before heard by human ears.

The sound of one hand clapping.

Attention Deficit Déjà Vu

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:10:10 -0400

The following appeared on Chicago Carless on 10/10/09.

Take my ADD, please. When my ADD sits around the house, it really sits around the house. I just flew in from Los Angeles, and boy is my ADD tired. Knock knock. Who's there? ADD. ADD, who? ADD to you, too, buddy.

Life with Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD) can frequently be its own punch line. A lifelong neurological condition often badly misinterpreted as a mere childhood behavioral issue, it's not so much paying attention that's the problem for us ADDers. The real impossible dream tends to be stopping ourselves form paying attention to less important tasks so we can focus on issues of immediate importance.

Often we hear from colleagues, friends, and family that we should "try harder" to focus on the task at hand--after all, they tell us, when we really put our mind to our work, we zero in like a laser. There's usually little headway to be made in explaining that no amount of trying harder can overcome a prefontal cortex wired to shut down the moment a task requiring executive thought functions occurs. Or that our occasional ability to hyperfocus on work is actually a symptom of ADD--the same symptom that more frequently leads us to watch Netflix, listen to iTunes, or play Xbox for eight-hour stints without coming up for air.

If there's an immediate payoff in sight, we're there. When faced with a boring task requiring us to order our thoughts or prioritize our work by time or importance, however...what did you say? I can't hear you. Too busy watching my Blu-ray of The Devil Wears Prada over here, for the third time in a row. Too engaged in doing so to stop and change gears. No matter how critical the task I should be doing, much less how large the eventual consequences may be. After all, an ADD/ADHD-wired brain only understands time in terms of now or never. So unless those pesky consequences are going to happen in the next few minutes, my brain just won't interpret them as mattering at all. Ever.

Those of you reading this with normal brains have absolutely no idea how to identify with the last two paragraphs I've written. Right now, you're scratching your heads and wondering if I'm kidding. Meanwhile, those of you with ADD/ADHD are nodding in agreement. It's a gap in understanding that often leaves ADDers feeling like we're living in a separate world, without the vocabulary to adequately explain to outsiders the all-encompassing nature and pernicious tenacity of the disorder we fight on a minute-by-minute basis.

Recently, the popular ADD/ADHD memoir blog, Jeff's ADD Mind, underscored this feeling of separateness known well by ADDers. A staunch opponent of the growing idea that ADD/ADHD is somehow a "gift", in a post entitled, Adult ADD as a Form of Madness, blogger Jeff describes the way an ADDer can seem to live the same, unproductive day over and over:

"I’m beginning to see ADD as a mild form of madness: a sort of insanity that never lets up...Its 'victims' lead a maddening, Sisyphean life as they relive the same day again and again as if they were performing their personalized version of (the movie) Ground Hog Day...ADD assures that its victim’s life will ALWAYS be a series of do-overs, a series of attempts to 'get it right,' to try to 'do the right thing.'"

Jeff notes that for every one battle ADDers manages to win against their symptoms, there are likely 10 other battles with less victorious outcomes. I agree. While I wouldn't consider myself "mad" by dint of having ADD, there's definitely a feeling of hopelessness that arises at the end of an hour, or day, or week when you realize you haven't performed your most critical activities or fulfilled your most important responsibilities--even though you've spent every spare ounce of your energy and second of your time trying to trick, cajole, force, and otherwise do an end run around your brain to make yourself start and follow-through on them all, all the while reminding yourself of the consequences of failure at every turn.

The urge to blame oneself is great in such circumstances. The truth, however, is that ADDers are slaves to outside aids. If it weren't for smart phones, electronic calendars, and email reminders, Ritalin and Adderall, or for the chronically uninsured--like me--fish oil, B supplements, and L tyrosine, we might never get anything done. As Jeff points out, even for all that technological and medicinal assistance, sometimes we don't get anything done, anyway:

"It seems all one can do is accommodate oneself to this madness, acknowledge that there will be good days (even good weeks!) and bad days (and even bad weeks!)...It is tiring to have to always fight to put it back in its cage again and again so that one could lead a 'normal' life."

Not all ADDers are built the same, of course. Although as sure as like attracts like, we do seem to gravitate towards each other. Without knowing it, regular readers of this blog are already acquainted with a few of the other ADDers in my life. Pastry Chef Chris. Sole Man Donn. Bartolobampo. My Cincinnati-expat friend, Handyman Nick. All of us experience the unproductive temporary madness of ADD in our own ways.

I tend to get wrapped up in distractions that last for days, even weeks at a time. Others in our group have a distractibility cycle measured in hours. Minutes even. Most of us have the ability to laugh about our symptoms. Some of us take meds. One of us doesn't but really, really needs to. Another one of us pretends he manages his symptoms perfectly, while knowing perfectly well that he doesn't.

And all of us would be at different, more advanced places in our personal and professional lives if we didn't have ADD at all. Jeff bluntly covered that topic earlier this year in a blog past called, You Have ADD/ADHD and You Will Not Be Rich and Famous. Maybe not. But the occasional ability to meet a client deadline the first time I put it on my calendar instead of the fifth would sure have me feeling like a million bucks. Imagine that--an ADDer being able to successfully manage his time.

It's madness, I tell you.

Cat and a Drop Dead Proof

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:10:54 -0400

The following appeared on Chicago Carless on 8/24/09.

When Overly Frank adopted olderly Ryza from PAWS Chicago earlier this month, the cuddly interaction between Oklahoma expat and 11-year-old feline made me realize how much I'd been taking my own lifelong (his) companion for granted.

Camões never saw the now-ongoing love-fest coming. For nine years, my Portuguese-monickered danger cat and I have been through a lot together. So many apartments. So many times around the futon chasing a ball of string. So many broken Christmas tree ornaments.

Our relationship is like my ADD attention span, the times I really focus on him come and go like the weather. He deserves more. I do too. Trouble is, my family history doesn't have a lot to teach about long-term relationships.

It's no surprise I recently shared with friends the realization that I have no idea how to enter and sustain adult relationships. I call it "The Lonely," the place I end up inside myself when I'm trumped by my ADD and my codependence. I sit there waiting for my Higher Power to lead me to more stable ground and remind me that the true definition of love is not something I learned in childhood.

Growing up in New York, I never knew my father--either one of them. Not the Irishman with my last name in the black-and-white portrait who allegedly died six months before I was born. Sure as hell not the Puerto Rican border hidden away in the family album with Brillo hair and crooked fingers not at all unlike my own.

A native Manhattanite, my Spanish mom married the Irishman and moved to Queens to get out of her own family's house and find independence. That's probably why she raised her kids white-bread American, never teaching us the language of her birth. Imagine her surprise when the Irishman dropped dead of alcoholism in 1964 and a short while later her mother came to retire in the attic apartment.

You'd think she'd have already learned to roll with the punches when she went to the doctor suspecting cancer in 1969 and learned of her unexpected pregnancy. She'd later tell me she cried knowing that it wasn't a terminal illness responsible for her bodily changes.

By the time I was born--six years after the Irishman died--my brother and sister, both a generation older, were already in the advanced stages of drug abuse and alcoholism. My mother should have known better than to entrust them with the secret of my origins, but given the Irishman's own addiction, she already had a long head start on codependence, herself.

But my Spanish mother was Catholic enough to feel ashamed at having a child out of wedlock, so a family and a neighborhood were sworn to silence. She sent the upstairs border with whom she had shared what would turn out to be the last sexual experience of her life away and put a dead man's name on my birth certificate.

I wouldn't learn the familiar man in the family album was my real father until the age of 24. When the truth finally came out, my mother told me she never loved my father and, after all, my brother and sister weren't ready for a new one, anyway. She also told me they'd been blackmailing her with the knowledge of my origins for my entire life, seeking money, approval of their eventually uninterrupted drunkenness, and silence for illegal actions. (I remain to this day the only person I know who can claim to have played as a pre-teen on bales of pot hidden in the family house by my sister's drug-dealer boyfriend.)

When my mother died in 1996, shortly after I fled the family household for the sober urbanity of Brownstone Brooklyn, I thought that was that. Before the funeral, out of resentment at how they had manipulated our mother, I hadn't had a discussion with my siblings in years. And even then, the closest my sister got to talking to me was the heckling she did from the first pew while I was delivering my mother's eulogy.

Still, in my mother's death, I thought I had finally escaped the clutches of my emotionally devastating family environment. As regular readers of this blog know, however, it would take many years of soul-searching, a move across country, and a lifetime of failed relationships for me to realize how damaging my upbringing had actually been.

Damaging enough to keep me from looking for my real father until my thirtieth birthday. Social Security death records told me I'd started my search eleven months too late. Digging through my mother's effects shortly after, I came across private notes he sent to the woman who didn't love him. I don't remember how long I sat there reading and re-reading them.

In my father's handwriting, they all made one thing clear: he loved her. But he was shut out. He eventually moved to Orange County, California, where he died in Santa Ana on September 29th, 1999. His name was Angelo Oropesa.

Before she died, my mother told me every time she looked at me, her breath was taken away by how much I resembled him. The few photos I have of Oropesa show him with children--my unknown half-brothers. From time to time, I poke around the Internet, seeking them. I probably always will. I doubt I'll ever find them.

Last week, I went looking again. That search proved surprisingly fruitful, if in an unexpected manner. I ran my own siblings' names through the Social Security death index.

I learned my sister has been dead for three years.

I doubt she ever let herself be happy. I doubt up until the end at the age of 56 she was ever sober for long. And I doubt my brother was sober enough to try and find me to let me know. I've spent many years building an information isolation from the two of them to protect me from their madness. Still, I'm eminently Google-able.

What really strikes me about my sister's death, though, isn't the late notice, but the lack of emotional impact the news has had on me. I feel sad that I don't feel sad at her passing. The most I've been able to muster is a sense of sorry when I picture how she must have lived the rest of her life. At one time, I loved her dearly. But I made peace with the destruction my family inflicted on itself a long time ago. And I let go of them a long time ago.

Eventually, no doubt, I'll find my brother in those death records. In the passing of my family members, what's truly remarkable is how resilient their ghosts have been. I wish I had the same ability to let them go, too.

Much as I wonder how well "Michael Oropesa" would have fit the face at the top of this blog.

Flight of the Trojans

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:10:35 -0400

The following appeared on Chicago Carless on 8/4/09.

So today begins the last year of my youth, and I'm trying to handle it. My body has long told me that year came some time ago. Chronic pain in my right hip and the old man "Uggh!" I groan upon standing suggest a chronological age a bit beyond my newly current 39.

The last age I took so hard was 25. Back then, launching into the latter half of my twenties without having achieved richness or thinness had me feeling like a big loser. Luckily, my self-confidence has improved since then. Now launching into my final 365 days before middle age without yet having achieved richness or thinness just has me feeling old.

"You have to remember, you're only as old as you feel," Sole Man Donn told me this afternoon. He meant well.

"I know," I said. "And I feel old."

"Well," Donn continued to the well-worn punch line, "then go feel a 20-year-old."

Last month, when my newly arrived mid-life crisis first began its sneak-attack, I noted the fallacy of the phalluses of twenty-somethings to adequately assuage the angst of advancing age. Not that I'd throw a fresh, nubile grad-schooler with a high libido and two working hips out of bed. But he'd have to be okay with leaving by eleven--a body this old can no longer survive on six hours a night.

Besides, those youngsters have little respect for their elders these days. Eight days ago, a new friend, the recent Oklahoma-expat, Overly Frank, showed little pity for the quickening pace of my deterioration. Guys who are too young to remember the first run of Star Wars--because they weren't born yet--rarely do. The blood was spilled in I.M. land...

10:33:38 PM Mike: I'm facing the last 8 days of my life before I begin the last year of my youth.

10:33:56 PM Frank: That is one way of looking at it. Or it could be that your youth ended 3,279 days ago, give or take.

10:36:19 PM Mike: I will, of course, remind you of that smart remark in a few months when you finally turn 30...I believe my card will read, "My condolences to your youth."

10:38:28 PM Frank: Well, my card to you will say that "age is just a number... expressed, in your case, in scientific notation."

10:57:27 PM Mike: Next time I see you, should I pat you on the head and sniff for that new-baby smell around your soft spot?

10:57:48 PM Frank: Are you making fun of my hair loss?

10:58:20 PM Mike: No not at all. Though I was thinking in regards to your turning 30 I could just send the flowers to wherever the hair went.

11:00:18 PM Frank: Okay. There were gloves. Not anymore.

Then again, fellow advanced-adult bloggers haven't been any more comforting. The response from Chicago Tech News publisher Todd Allen when I told him I suspected my mid-life crisis was upon me: "You're going to look mighty funny buying a Corvette and not knowing how to drive it."

Rimshot. Try the veal. Remember to tip your waitress.

I'm actually grateful for the humor. I'm surprised how much of a shock the realization of 40 being just around the corner has been to my system. Age really is just a number, and I feel happier, more fulfilled, more on track, and more spiritually aware at 39 than I ever have in my life.

None of that made it any easier to suppress the urge to strangle the barista in the coffee bar where I'm writing this when an hour ago he popped a suicide-by-depressing-lyrics mix of songs by artists trying to save polar bears on late-night TV into the CD player.

The Sinatra at Lido's Caffé in Oak Park at the weekly coffee klatsch last Tuesday night was a lot more bearable. The new rule being I'm no longer allowed to verbally refer to Doctor Dementia, instead Hoosierella, Pastry Chef Chris, and new pastry-chef-squeeze Bearoke opened the evening wishing good thoughts towards the temporarily incarcerated Gay O.J. (no FIB should ever attempt a low-speed flight from Cheesehead fuzz on a suspended license--'nuff said.)

They needn't have worried, though. My thoughts last week were stuck on impending AARP membership. But I'd already tread that ground the previous Tuesday, so I covered up my angst by asking how everyone else was doing.

Hoosierella never saw it coming. "Hey," I asked her, "did you and your husband ever find out if the chocolate-flavored condoms you got from Chris really tasted like they were supposed to?"

As her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates, I continued.

"Well," I amended myself. "Really, did you ever find out?"

"Be careful how you answer," Chris interjected. "You know where this conversation is gonna end up."

"Um, no..." 'Rella stammered.

"You know what?" Bearoke intervened as a palpable sense of relief went around the far side of the table. "I'm pretty sure they did. One day at work, we had a whole bag of flavored condoms, and we were pretty bored."

Boy, was that sense of relief misplaced.

"Go on," I said, as I sharpened my inner pencil to take notes.

"We decided to have a tasting flight," Bearoke continued as I thanked the Universe on behalf of my byline for friends like these. "We sorted the condoms by type, blew them up like balloons, passed them around the room, and licked them to check for flavor. And surprisingly, most of them tasted just like what the package said."

"Most of them?" asked Chris.

"Well, except for the cola-flavored condom. That just left a nasty, sweet aftertaste in your mouth."

"You've gotta tell me," I asked Bearoke, barely able to get the next words out as I descended into tear-inducing laughter. "Was it like a wine tasting? Every time you licked a condom, did you have to spit afterwards?"

"Oh my God," said Chris to the table, "look at his eyes! He's writing a headline for his blog as he's sitting here!"

He knows me well. I'll let the gang know of their most recent turn on Carless later tonight when they fête me for my birthday at Poor Phil's prior to our regular appearance at Lido's. The crowd won't be as large as the surprise party my old NYC friends threw when they thought I was moving back a couple of years ago. But these local guys have my back, too.

Unfortunately, at my age, I have enough back for all of us. Besides suffering through Sarah McLachlan tunes in public places, I also often sit at my dining table to blog. Recenty, when the aches and pains of age came calling once again as they so often do now, I came to the realization I either need comfier chairs or a fatter ass.

No one should worry about quality time with the birthday boy tonight. Thanks to age's waning metabolism (yeah, that's it), these days there's more than enough of me to go around.