Pedro's Office and Other Places

“Get out of those drawers,” I cautioned my newly-wed husband. We were waiting in the examination room of his long-time family doctor, Pedro.

“There might be something in here that I need,” he rebuked me.

“Like what?” I asked. “That’s where they keep tongue depressors and other supplies they use with patients. Those are not yours to take.”

“Of course, I can take them,” he countered. “I pay for services, and if Pedro doesn’t use one of these on me, I can take it home.”

He began to pocket a couple of band-aides and a large tongue depressor. I turned my head so I would not be a witness to it.

“Oh, Lord!” I wailed inwardly. “The nurse will walk in here at any moment and catch him.”

Finally I could not contain it. “Why do you think you have the right to riffle through those things?”

“Oh, Mom does it all the time. She opens drawers and says ‘I need one of these’ and puts it in her purse.”

For some unknown reason I laughed with him, and envisioned his mother humming and nonchalantly examining potential treasures.

However, I made a mental note to talk with my Mother-in-law of six weeks.

“The other day your son was digging through the drawers in Pedro’s examination room,” I began. “He said he learned it from you, which seems to make it right.”

She turned a light shade of crimson before she laughed. “Yep, I dig around in there myself in case I find something I want.” she explained.

Now nearly 40 years later I vividly recall my sense of amazement and moral astonishment. I was reminded of it just the other day.

“What are you doing in the bottom drawer of my desk?” I asked Husband who was visiting my office.

“Looking to see what you have in there,” he casually replied as he opened a box of snacks. “This is where you keep snacks and munchies.”

I don’t expect him to ask, but a statement of intent would be nice.

He has played with others’ desk and office objects at various times and occasions throughout the years as happened at the bank last week.

This time he wrapped the chain of a pen around and around the support, then unwrapped it only to begin wrapping it again.  “Why are you twirling the chain on that base?” I asked while we waited for a banker.

“Because it is there,” he reasoned. “If they don’t want people like me to play with pens and chains on their desks, they shouldn’t have them right in front of us.”

When I attempted to explain this persistent behavior to Oldest Daughter, she gave me her standard come back, “Don’t blame it on ADHD, Mom. It is nothing but personality.”

“How can I separate behavior from his ADHD?  All decisions, all actions seem to flow through that filter.”

“It is a matter of choice. As you always tell us, life is a series of choices, and he is has learned to make such choices.”

“I see it as a social thing.  It seems he does not have the same social filters most of us have.”

“He has the social training he got from his mother,” she argued.

“Well, we strongly suspicion that she was also a person with ADHD. Thom Hartmann’s perspective on ADHD suggests persons with it are descendants of Hunters of early-day cultures."

“Humpf.”

She and her sister seem to say that to me quite often.