Lyssa Beyer

Dear Ask Anything,
I think I have ADHD. Help! I can’t concentrate on school and all I want to do is run around. My mom won’t let me take Ritalin, so what should I do?
Sincerely,
Can’t Sit Still

Dear Can’t Sit Still,
I would have to agree with your mother. You have to understand this. Do you know Ritalin? Do you know Ritalin is a street drug? Do you understand that? I’m asking you a question. You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do. All it does is mask the problem, and if you don’t understand the history of it, it masks the problem. There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance. Vitamins and exercise, that’s what should be prescribed instead of Ritalin. Still, Still, Still, you’re glib. You’re glib. You’re glib. You don’t even know what Ritalin is. Read research papers, that’s what I’ve done. Be more responsible and do the same. I don’t talk about things I don’t understand.

Wow, I am so sorry about that, Still, for some reason I became distracted and went off on one of my little Tom Cruise rants about Ritalin again. My bad. At least it pertained to the question you asked. Normally when I do that it’s after a professor asks me when the Bull-Moose Party disbanded and why Teddy Roosevelt was such a persistent son of a gun. But I digress.

Yes, Tom Cruise is one of the dumbest persons alive. However, I can’t help but at least put a little stock into his vitamin and exercise suggestion. Will it completely rid you of your unfortunate ways? Likely not. But if you have the urge to run around, I say do it as long as it doesn’t effect your school work and you don’t disrupt people doing it. And who couldn’t use more vitamins right? The fact is, if your mom sides with Tom Cruise, then you better use his alternate methods. Just don’t pick up on Scientology, otherwise you may begin to wear fat suits and dress up like the opposite sex just as famed scientologist John Travolta did.

Dear Ask Anything,
I’m afraid my friendships will die over the summer. What are some things I can do to make sure the bonds I have formed will last through these warm months and are strong enough to withstand the distance?
Sincerely,
Long Distance BFF

Dear Long Distance BFF,
I suppose you want me to start off by saying something to the affect of “As we go on, we remember all the times we had together. And as our lives change, come whatever, we will still be, friends forever.” But if you have seen me recently with my new hair cut, clearly I bear no resemblance to Vitamin C.

But for you I think that’s a good thing, because any advice she would offer you would be tacky, melodramatic, and cliché as all getup. But hey, maybe you could turn around and use it as your graduating class’s motto. Do college graduating classes even have those? Doesn’t matter either way.

What matters is it all comes down to you and the friend. If either of you drops the ball as far as keeping up contact, then the friendship is already in trouble. Set a plan of how often you are going to talk. Whether sending a message every day on Facebook, calling once a week on the good old cellular phones, or better yet, sending actual mail, you have to stick to the plan. If the other person doesn’t get on their case once and if it happens again, you know it wasn’t meant to last forever.

But might I suggest something that has worked for me. As you may know, my co-Ask Anything columnist and I will be parting ways as she goes on to bigger and better things and I stay here. And the only reason Lyssa has so much dirt on me is because we are best friends for life. So to keep up tabs, we are each taking Polaroid pictures of the other, sticking it in a wooden box the other person has made, and the picture of them will be placed in the box.

So Lyssa will have a Scott in a box, and I will have a Lyssa in a box. That way, even when you can’t talk to each other via Facebook, phone, or mail, you can always whip out the box with the picture and their aura and have a good old fashioned conversation with it. And if you think it’d weird that it won’t respond, just get the person to record some of their favorite sayings. Lyssa and I haven’t done that because our relationship is so strong we can always picture the other right in front of us. But if yours isn’t, don’t fret, just do this.

With my parting words I would say this to you, BFF – you can survive out there. You can make it somehow. I guess you thought that this would never end, but the past won’t be a shadow that follows you around. The memories won’t fade when you leave this town, don’t keep thinking of it as goodbye, but just think of it as your time to fly.

Ask Anything appears every Thursday.