Traveling with ADHD

Now that I’m beginning to look like a senior citizen–perhaps because I’m a senior citizen–I’m having a new experience in airports. Airline employees sometimes volunteer unsolicited help when I travel alone now. Mild confusion, once inexplicable and annoying to neurotypical airline personnel, is more often treated as a problem of aging. That’s great news for Boomers traveling with ADHD…assuming you can tolerate being pitied…poor thing!

I returned to Nashville from Los Angeles last week, and a nice young taxi driver from Ethiopia drove me home. He had immigrated to the U.S. only six months ago. When we arrived at my house at 10 pm, he lifted my suitcase from the back of his taxi while I grabbed my backpack. Then he asked, “Do you have everything? Do you have your cell phone?”

I felt for the lump in my pocket. “No, I don’t think I have my cell phone,” I said. He leaned over the back seat of his minivan and retrieved my phone from the floorboard. 

“I always ask,” he said. I tipped him and thanked him for that, and for telling me his story of how he came to the U.S. 

Dealing with my neurological difference can seem insurmountable at times, but imagine trying to integrate into our culture with dark skin and an African accent in the current political climate, not to mention learning a new language well enough to work. I admire his courage. 

I could see my breath when I exited the cab. I had left my favorite jacket in the Landmark Theatre at Westwood Plaza in Los Angeles. The jacket was never turned in to Landmark’s lost and found. 

I hope that whoever found my jacket needed it, can wear a large size, and likes black fabric with black leather sleeves. If a UCLA student is reading this blog while wearing my jacket, with a Levi’s tag inside the collar, please contact me. It is colder here than there, and I will gladly trade a lighter jacket for it.

The best ADHD travel story I know starts at the bottom of page 75 in my book Living Well with ADHD. I’m grateful to Eric for sharing it. You can share your best ADHD travel story in the comment section below.