This ADHD post is too long. As you’ll see, that’s kind of the point.
We flew from Santa Fe to Dallas to visit our new foster great-grandchild. Yay!
But:
Checking in, I left one of our bags at the security checkpoint. We nearly left without it except I thought maybe I heard my name called. But when I went over, they were calling “ Burger. Burger,” so I told them the bag wasn’t ours. They couldn’t read my printing on the tag. It was Puryear, not Burger. But we got the bag.
The flight was OK. We got turned around in the Dallas airport and couldn’t find baggage claim. By the time we got there, all the passengers and bags were gone. Then I saw our bag sitting in the airline office. I went in and said, “This is ours,“ and walked off with it. No questions, no ID. Nothing.
Then we had a long cold walk with our bags, outside the building, to the pick up area for the rental car shuttle. Then we waited. Then the shuttle took us on a very long ride to the office. No problems there. We had a very very very long ride to get out of the airport, which is huge. Then a long slow drive target to our granddaughter’s house, partly because it was raining. Bumper to bumper. Slow.
Trip back was similar in reverse, but less so.
Now to get to the point. We’d flown from Santa Fe because it’s more convenient. It saves the hour’s drive to Albuquerque to get Southwestern and fly into Love Field, which is close to our granddaughter’s house. And the hour back to Santa Fe. As it turned out, it probably took us over two hours extra doing it this way, and a lot more frustration.
Long trip, long post.
Strategies:
1. Always count all of your bags at every transition.
2. Always research your travel plans and see that they make sense, that you have chosen the best options.
3. Consider trying to avoid flying in the first place. With all the hassles, with security and lines, it’s clear that bin Laden won.
4. Oh, and make sure your bags have a tag with your name legible.
Doug
Link: What Living with ADHD is Like
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Life with ADHD.
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suz- if you are able to work from home, you probably have the right amount of ocd.
is that common? — If I cant see it, it doesnt exist. thats why i leave things out, hoping my wife wont put them away.
thanks for your comments
doug
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Excellent idea to count your bags every step of the way. Put two luggage tags on each bag, one on each handle. Also (not that I usually remember to do this), but when I’ve really got it together I print out a copy of my itinerary and put it in each bag, with my contact info (email and phone, obviously never address). I also now take a photo of every bag of everyone in my traveling party (“Mom, really?”), either at home or at the airport with my iPhone. Bonus points for taking a photo with the airline tags on.
This might be a good moment to mention that when you’re traveling internationally, get a couple of high-quality color photocopies of your passport and put them in different spots, away from your real passport. If your passport is lost or stolen, this one step will radically minimize the hoops you have to jump through to get a new one.
Left my phone on a flight last week, but fortunately it was a tiny airport and it just so happened that someone I’d had a 2-minute chat with before takeoff saw it on my seat and was taking it to the airline counter inside the airport. He didn’t know it was mine, but I recognized him carrying it and knew it was wasn’t his (mine has a cross-body strap, which luckily always keeps me from misplacing it, except when it doesn’t).
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suz- great strategies. It seems possible that, like me, you are a teeny weeny bit compulsive. that is a great asset if you have ADHD. a little extra hassle along the way can save a huge hassle later on, and seems worth the effort.
thank you for contributing
doug
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Actually, I wish I were more compulsive, or at least had a more consistent response to the same situations. (Particularly in the morning). I’m self-employed and work from home, so there’s no one is monitoring my behavior.
I am certainly fervent about my latest problem-solving idea and can spend ages hyperfocusing on that. And unless something is directly in my line of vision, such as important papers, I tend to forget about it. Is that common for ADHD folks?
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