One of the things that amazes me about my kids is how easy school seems to come to them. Alex works his ass off and studies without parental prompting, but he doesn’t struggle. Rachel seems to just flow through school, and other than needing occasional help (usually from Alex) with math concepts, she grasps the information being handed to her. Kevin is just enthusiastic about everything; he’s the kid who looks forward to the start of school every year (owing to being somewhat of a social butterfly, which also gets him into trouble every now and then) and he’s engaged in what he’s learning.

We get the typical moaning and groaning complaints every morning when alarms begin to go off, but once they’re awake and dressed, all three kids are (or seem to be) eager to get out the front door and get to school. They talk animatedly about favorite subjects (and frequently over my head) and do the work they’re supposed to do as soon as they’re in my office at the dojang after school.

It amazes me because school was never that easy for me. I fought my parents on homework, I annoyed my classmates with somewhat disruptive behavior in grade school, and I didn’t grasp a lot of what I was being taught. I couldn’t focus; I wanted to learn but I didn’t know how, and the fact that I survived grade school without being held back is still somewhat puzzling.

I was that kid, the one you didn’t want to have to sit next to because he was going to fidget, talk out of turn, get up when he was supposed to remain still. I was the kid who got you into trouble because you whispered a reminder that Sister was going to beat the holy shit out of you if you didn’t shut up and sit still. I was also the kid who fidgeted during Mass, and in early 7th grade was punched in the face by a nun because along with my fidgeting, I stuck my finger in my mouth and touched the Host because it was stuck and I was choking on it.

This was the final incident in a long line of incidents for my father; I came home with a swollen and bloody nose and the next morning he withdrew all of us from the parochial school and enrolled us in public. It had been years of listening to complaints about not only my behavior, but complains about my sister’s social tendencies (like Kevin, she talked far too much in class) and my brother’s surliness (he was born in a bad mood and never got over it.) He was tired, but punching his son was it, and he was no longer willing to take on double and triple shifts to pay the tuition if they were beating up his kids.

Public school was not much better; I was the new kid, I was small for my age, I was mouthy, and I was terrified. I missed social cues on a constant basis, yet did not realize I was annoying those around me, and assumed their attentions were offers of friendship. I annoyed one person to the point of retaliation: she made it her goal to drive me insane by the end of the school year, yet I didn’t grasp that was what was going on. She was including me, therefore she liked me. It did not permeate my brain that the attention was not what I perceived (although my persistence did, over time, wear her down.)

And I still struggled with school work. I understood things on a fundamental level, but I wasn’t hearing most of what the teachers were saying. By the end of the year I’m sure I had exhausted all of my teachers and I’m almost convinced that my favorite, Mrs. Cheshire, got pregnant and took a leave of absence simply to avoid having me as a student in 8th grade.

When the start of 8th grade rolled around I didn’t have the usual nausea that I had most years; this would be different because I had friends at this school, and even if the teachers hated me, at least I had friends to fall back on. I was the one they picked on, but I didn’t mind, because they liked me, and I’d never experienced that.

Because I suffered this delusion, I had the nerve to talk to the girls I liked. Eventually one of them liked me back. And admitted it. This girl seemed to understand my lack of focus; she had a little brother at home who was a lot like me, and she had an idea how to help me survive school. This was decades before the word “multitasking” was in the vernacular, but she grasped that that was exactly what I needed to do in order to absorb information.

Over the next five years, she was the reason I began to do well in school. She organized the people I assumed were my friends into study groups, and convinced them that I was not the pain in the ass they believed. I was just a kid who couldn’t focus, and a kid who needed to be able to walk around the room while learning. I was the kid who could filter information if I was dribbling a ball on the floor. For an hour or two after school, we did homework together. They let me wander the room, poking my fingers into everything, lay on the floor tossing a baseball between my hands, anything I needed to do in order to hear and comprehend what was being said to me. They recited math problems and wrote down my answers; I only needed to re-do it in my own handwriting later.

English class became a joy; she read books out loud to me, and I was able to retain them. I learned to like history, I was able to pass science classes, and eventually many of my teachers were willing to give me oral exams during my lunch and study hall periods. Over those five years, I learned to organize myself enough that when I entered college, I could sit still through my classes.

Even today, I have trouble focusing on one thing. I rarely watch TV because of this; I’m not a TV snob and I don’t think it’s a low brow activity left for those lacking in the intelligence to immerse themselves in fine literature. I just can’t sit still long enough to watch it. I love reading, but five pages into most books and my mind is wandering and I’m getting up to do other things. Char reads to me frequently, if we’re interested in the same book, sometimes if we’re not. She stretches out of the bed and reads out loud while I do other things; I poke around online, I sift through dojang paperwork, or I work out.

It’s the only way I know how to do things: more than one at a time.

When I was in grade school and junior high, no one thought anything other than I was a pain in the ass. My parents were frustrated that I refused to sit still and refused to cooperate with my teachers. No one understood, until 8th grade, that I couldn’t. My life was, and mostly is, like living inside a television where someone else has control of the remote, and they spend a great deal of time changing channels.

It was in my mid thirties when I finally understood what was “wrong” with me. My ex (yes, she was the girl in 8th grade and beyond) had mentioned in an offhanded way many times that I was classic ADD, but we always laughed it off. I should have known; when I was studying for a BA in Justice Administration I minored in psychology. I basically understood about attention deficit disorder but never thought that was me, not until on a whim Char pushed me towards the shrink that counseled people where we worked.

As a child, it seems, I was “extremely scattered,” yet as an adult I’ve developed coping mechanisms; I’m naturally drawn to activities that either come with frequent changes in a given time span (such as TKD) or activities that require hyper-focusing (such as riding a motorcycle.) I don’t fidget when I have a kid in need of my full attention or when my wife has things on her mind; I can be there mentally and physically when intimacy is an issue. I don’t know why I can focus for my family, but I’m not going to contemplate it in case I screw it up. For the most part, I’ve structured my life to accommodate my inability to sit still, but when I absolutely have to, I now can.

Make no mistake, this is not by sheer willpower; I cannot will myself to sit there and watch half an hour of TV with my kids. I can fall into a book on my own now, but that’s rare. I’m fortunate that Char doesn’t take it personally that when she’s talking to me I tend to look away, pick up a pencil and paper and scribble something, or surf online. She knows that I’m listening, even if it doesn’t look like I am. And I think I manage singular focus when it matters the most.

Still, I watched the kids drag their books out after dinner, and while I cleaned up the kitchen they started on homework, and it struck me as odd that they can just sit there and do it. I watch them like this all the time, but this time it hit me that I could never manage that when I was their age. And their ability to do it amazes me. The fact that they enjoy school blows me away as much as it pleases me. I’m hoping that this will help take them much farther than I was able to go in life.

Writing this? I can sit here and write without getting up. I won’t be able to go back and read what I’ve written without getting up a few times, but I can sit and write without fidgeting, squirming, picking up something else to do, but I don’t know why. I just go with it.