At age seven, in second grade, began to show the symptoms and behaviors of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) his teacher had spoken to us of her concerns and thought it might be a good idea for him to see the pediatrician. I was initially against this because I was afraid this diagnosis was just an excuse to give these young kids very powerful drugs without really looking into the root cause of the problem and trying alternative therapies, but I couldn’t let this fear stand in the way of my son’s well-being, and we made an appointment with his doctor. At the appointment, the doctor agreed there were things similar to ADHD, and he did prescribe him Adderall. Of course, I was concerned about the prescription, but it was a fairly new drug at the time, which I liked. I had been most afraid of Ritalin. I’m sure it’s a wonderful and effective tool in certain circumstances, but I’d also heard bad things about it and was far more comfortable with my son taking something else. Even though he prescribed the ADHD drug, the doctor felt there was more going on and set out to get us an appointment with the Center for the Study of Development and Learning at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

We started him on the Adderall for the first time on a Friday morning a few days later. We gave it to him with his breakfast but asked him to not tell the teacher that he had taken medicine. To get a fair and objective opinion of its effects, we thought it best that she not know. When I picked him up after school, he gave me a note from his teacher that was about how fantastic a turnaround he had made. In the note she said that she had asked him what he had done differently, and he told her “my breakfast.” She joked that we should keep with whatever brand of cereal he had eaten.

In his answer to her question, he broke through any unnecessary information and answered simply, literally. The literal aspect of this answer we would understand better after our visit to Chapel Hill.

After two weeks had passed, we made the two-hour drive from our home to Chapel Hill. Our appointment was early the next morning, and we had reserved a room at the local Holiday Inn to prevent making the drive so early.

I also thought we should try to make it a fun family trip and not just a trip to a doctor, and we spent the afternoon at the Morehead Planetarium. Fortunately this was November, very early in the season, and I was able to get tickets to the Carolina basketball game that night. This would have been impossible in January or later when their schedule is full of better teams. We all enjoyed it, and a couple of good things came from it. Like his answer to the teacher about “his breakfast,” there was another occasion for something relevant to his appointment. Also, my son would fall in love with the ram mascot, the student in a suit you see at basketball games instead of a real, living, four-legged ram at football games, and from that point until now, at age seventeen, in our family, he would be called Rammy.