On October 31st of 1999, Halloween here in the States, my family moved to Los Angeles from a small flat in England. They were, at that time, just my parents, my brother, and my sister. A year and three days later, I was born. I don't think it was immediately obvious（明显的） I was a little different, but around when I was four, my lack（缺乏） of attention became more apparent（显然的）. I wasn't replying to people. I just seemed to ignore（不顾） them.

  I got my mom so worried I was partially（部分地） deaf that she spent $400 on a fancy（奇特的） hearing（ 听力） test. I passed it with flying colors, and I've never heard the end of it. My inability（无能力） to focus on anything for any length（长度） of time, my forgetfulness, and my complete lack of organization is something nowhere short of legendary（传说的）. I always lost pencils, never turned in assignments（任务）, even when I did them. I always left jackets at school which many times I've never seen again. I couldn't sit still, and if I did sit still, I was talking.

  I talked so much that even when I wasn't talking, my teacher still told me to be quiet because I just assumed（假定） I was. My third grade（等级） teacher put me in my very own corner of the classroom, away from everybody else, to try and stop me from talking. What actually happened is I just shouted across the classroom. I was a nightmare（梦魇）, and this whole time I always had so many missing assignments（任务）, always more than anyone else. Fourth grade was a turning point. My mother had been working（使工作） to become a teacher, and through this she worked with kids who had been diagnosed（诊断） with ADHD.

  And she started to realize that these kids seemed really familiar（熟悉的）. Their problems were the same as my problems. By April of fourth grade, I'd been to a therapist（临床医学家） that had been diagnosed（诊断） with ADHD, which in a nutshell, there's three things. Impulsivity, hyperactivity, and intertension. Impulsivity, yeah, that's why I was just always blurting out whatever（任何） was on my mind and talking to us. Hyperactivity, I was always fidgeting, much the annoyance（烦恼） of, well, everyone around me.

  Intertension, though（ 虽然）, is a bad way to describe it. Actually, my brain just moves from one thing to the next very rapidly（快） until something really catches my attention, and I get kind（种类） of sucked（吸） in, and I might have like（喜欢） a short-lived obsession（迷住） about it. This is what's responsible（负责的） for my forgetfulness. I can remember things fine, just only when I pay attention. That just doesn't happen often. It's also responsible for many of my life experiences.

  I've tried all the sports, even baseball, which was a terrible idea. You never stick（刺） a kid with ADHD on a field waiting. I tried robotics, I tried a few instruments, and all of those were a massive（厚重的） failure（失败）. I tried cartooning, which I actually got pretty good at, but then I want to learn how to paint, never did, and now my interest is gone. I tried to teach myself computer programming（计划）. That got boring by the end of the day.

  The point is, I was always moving from one thing to the next. To treat（对待） these symptoms（症状） and save my parents' reputation（名誉） for being able to raise a child, I was given（做） medication（药物）. It was probably the single most impactful event in my entire（全部的） life. In the beginning, it was wonderful. It was the fifth grade. I was a model student.

  I not only finished my work, I did it quickly, then helped my friends finish their work, and we were all done and horsing around while everyone else was still going. The best part about it was that the third grade teacher who sat me in a corner was the fifth grade teacher. I can't imagine how confused she was. This continued in the sixth grade. I stayed organized, stayed on top of my work, got perfect grades, and everything was wonderful. But going into the seventh grade, the dosage of the medication I took was raised because it was the thought I needed to cope（对付） with the increasing pressure（压力） in middle school.

  This is ironic（说反话的）, considering that in middle school, the real pressure is from your peers（同等的人）, something that for me, the higher dosage actually damaged（损害）.