It's time I gave it to ya straight folks. You've no doubt suspected this for years, but I just want to get it out in the open once and for good so we can all be on the same page: I, mild-mannered and overwhelmingly popular columnist Nick Moose, am in fact, disabled.
Maybe not quite so disabled as someone who's actually disabled mind you, but according to whoever it is that decides such things, Attention Deficit Disorder is an honest to gosh disability.
The only known cure for ADD is reading 90,000,000,000 page books on how not to have ADD.Admittedly, it's not as bad as being just a human foot hooked up to a series of machines, or having to defecate explosively at inopportune times out of a poo-hole on your neck. Still, ADD in its own insidious way does impair my life on a regular basis. It ranks as the second most severe contributing factor towards my inability to graduate from college in under a decade. (Number one is just DD, "Dollar Drafts.")
Of course, I've always been able to compose my solid gold awesome columns because while doing so I can take a break to shotgun a beer every five minutes so my adoring public hasn't had to suffer.
However, when it comes to higher education, ADD can be a harsh mistress (albeit one who fucks you regularly). Consider this scenario folks, it's one that keeps me up at night:
One day I could be walking to class and suddenly start thinking about how the new version of the "Cookie Crisp" cereal dog is vastly inferior to the old one. I mean he isn't even dressed like a robber anymore and he doesn't have the "Cookie Crook" with him. He looks more like a non-descript wolf or something. Then I start thinking about whether or not Frankenberry was supposed to be gay, and whatever happened to "Yummy Mummy!?" Or to "Thrust Mummies 4," the adult film I had once planned on making; would I be obligated to produce three other "Thrust Mummies" tapes first to justify its title?
Next thing you know, out of nowhere, KERPLOW! I'm run over by a Zamboni machine! Yes, with my head amongst the mummy porn clouds, I managed to wander into a skating rink somewhere off-campus, where frightened children had to witness my smooshing.
And scary as that may sound, it's only scratching the surface of the hell that is this disease.
As a side effect of my ADD, it is clinically impossible for me to care about anything that doesn't involve either:
A) What some philistines consider "stupid crap," or,
B) Girls whom I wish to be having sex-style relations with.
"Camp Rock," "My Pet Monster," what the nipple buds of the female adjacent to me probably look like: one or all of these topics is likely to pass through the cavernous crevices of my mind during, for example, a typical Kent State "History of the Mollusk" type class. You know what doesn't pass through? That's right, anything even transiently related to the history of the damn mollusk!
I should probably do something to remedy this whole situation if I want to graduate before the sun consumes the Earth, or I die. The problem is, the only known cure for ADD, apart from taking an elaborate regime of medication that you're not supposed to mix with alcohol (not worth it), is apparently reading 90,000,000,000-page long books on how not to have ADD. Sadly, your average ADD-afflicted individual can scarcely make it all the way through R.L Stein's immortal Monster Blood without drifting off. Even though it's approximately 35 pages long and has only 14 bold-faced words per page.
I know most of my fans are advanced placement middle school students, but the slim few that do attend college may have heard of a service called "Student Disability Services," or SDS. It provides assistance for "special" students, helping them to learn despite their not-so-handy caps.
Up until this past semester I've been too proud to utilize their services, being THE Nick Moose of Nick Moose fame and all, but then I remembered I was 25 and still had at least that many years left before I graduated. So I decided it was high time to play the SDS card.
I assumed they could shepherd me through the remaining quarter century of my college experience by providing me with a handicapped parking space to help make me not get as killed on the way to class. Or perhaps replace a difficult teacher with a pair of enormous undulating talking breasts, or the Splinter puppet from the Ninja Turtles movies. But when I questioned them about these learning strategies all they said was they could get me a note taker! Come on SDS! All I'm asking for is a CONCENTRATED effort! Are you even listening to me?