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Episode 103 - ADHD & Phones: The Love-Hate Relationship
54 Plays21 days ago
Welcome to ADHDville, the podcast where the distractions, the landmarks, and the detours are the main roads! Join your hosts, Martin West and Paul Thompson, two friends with combined-type ADHD and over 30 years of camaraderie, as they explore life through a wonderfully ADHD lens.
In this episode, they take a hilarious and relatable deep dive into the world of phones. From the shared phobia of making phone calls and the exhausting social dance of ending them, to a nostalgic trip through rotary phones, brick phones, and the modern smartphone dilemma, no stone is left unturned. They ask the important questions: Are phones an ADHD lifesaver or a source of burnout? A dopamine goldmine or an anxiety trigger?
Pull up a virtual pint at the King's Agitated Head pub, and join the conversation in ADHDville. Don't forget to subscribe for fresh episodes every Tuesday.
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Put quill to paper and send us an email at: ADHDville@gmail.com
ADHD/Focus music from Martin (AKA Thinking Fish)
Theme music was written by Freddie Philips and played by Martin West. All other music by Martin West.
Please remember: This is an entertainment podcast about ADHD and does not substitute for individualized advice from qualified health professionals.
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Transcript
Introduction to ADHDville
00:00:00
Speaker
Back in the room. Back in the room. Again. Again. Back in the room. All right. Right. Well, ah let's go to a place where the distractions, the landmarks and the details are. the main one Welcome to ADHDville. Yeah, let's go there.
00:00:14
Speaker
Let's go there. Let's go there. Let's go there.
00:00:29
Speaker
Talking about homes and stuff.
00:00:38
Speaker
That's you.
Meet the Hosts: Paul and Martin's ADHD Journey
00:00:40
Speaker
That's me. Hello, I'm Paul Thompson with a P. Not the Paul. Obviously, that's got a P. Otherwise, it wouldn't be Paul. would be all. No, the Thompson's got a P. Thompson.
00:00:50
Speaker
And I was diagnosed with combined ADH and another D again, crawling towards a bunch of years ago. Hello, I'm Martin West and was diagnosed with the combined poo-poo platter in 2013 and we start off as we have been at the King's Agitated Head pub in ADHDville where we, the ex-co-mayors of ADHD, sit in the back and enjoy a drink or two and we're glad that you're here to join us.
00:01:18
Speaker
Yes. um to crazy Cradling like a communal pint. Mm-hmm. I've got that thing, you know, like like where you're kind of hot and your and your and your and you're a little bit sweaty and and your and your glasses start ah start to mist over.
00:01:35
Speaker
yeah Yeah. thats martin martin Martin's just come straight. He's come straight from the his lawn mowing Yeah. lord lord bowing ah yeah ah myal yeah Yep, I have mowed the lawn this morning.
Seth Joins the ADHD Council
00:01:51
Speaker
um All right, so we are going to talk about phones. um bit but we But before we do that, ah we have a and and an announcement.
00:02:02
Speaker
A new member has joined the ADHD Council. Okay. um So this week ah we are excited for Seth.
00:02:15
Speaker
for seth by My friend Seth, who is a who is a psychy psychologist, he's been on the pod, I think, back in episode 30-something, and he's got... he's got his He's got a like a PhD in psychology and stuff, and he listens to every single episode.
00:02:42
Speaker
um Good man. Good man. Well done, Seth. So he is now a minister Minister of Headstuff. Okay.
00:02:53
Speaker
So congratulations to you. yeah We need it. we needed do We have needed someone like that. We have needed it. And he's been there consistently. so All the time. but okay All right. So let's crack on and talk about phones.
Phone Call Phobia: Shared Experiences
00:03:10
Speaker
Where are we going, Paulio?
00:03:13
Speaker
We are going, mr West. We're going to the park bench. ah that's Good places any need to talk about phones. Fine. Let's jump in the tractor and get going.
00:03:27
Speaker
Move up, move up. Perch yourselves. Yeah, Root for everyone. Oh, off we go. Almost. Ah.
00:03:45
Speaker
That sounds lovely. Lovely. All right. Well, phones. So what I thought we would do is that we we would talk about, like, phone calls generally yeah from an ADHD point of view.
00:03:58
Speaker
um yeah And then we'll kind of go back and we'll kind of go through the history of phones and all the phones that we've had um because I thought that would be kind of quite, quite good fun.
00:04:09
Speaker
Yeah. So let's start with phone calls, which... I don't know you, Paul. Nightmare. Mostly. Nightmare.
00:04:19
Speaker
In general. Nightmare. like Yes. I mean, so for me, what? What? Yeah, we we're kind of established that even though we've Martin and have been mates for getting on for like 30, 30. More than that. 39 years. Yep.
00:04:40
Speaker
thirty nine years yeah Something like that. Okay. We can't realize that we work together. we would to We went to college, art college together, ah mates, and we even worked together for a few years.
00:04:56
Speaker
Turns out we've got the same phobia of making phone calls and answering the telephone in general. Yeah. Yeah. There I was sitting there all those years thinking I'm the only one, you know, like it's like ridiculous conversation, you know, like like bad conversations with myself. Oh, Paul, you know, what the hell? Why are you afraid of the freaking phone?
00:05:19
Speaker
There was Martin next to me. i didn't realize had the same kind of fears. Yeah. It is quite funny when you think about it, right? Because um I would have obviously looked at you and you would have said, oh, I'm i'm i'm just going to give so-and-so a call.
00:05:33
Speaker
And you get your phone and you make the call. I think, hey, look at him go. Look at him go. He just picks up my phone and phones someone. exactly How does he do it? Look at him. How does he do that?
00:05:45
Speaker
Or if we'd been, like, diagnosed, like, 40 years a ago with ADHD, would have said to Martin, mate, I need to make this call to a printer.
00:05:59
Speaker
Can you be, like, my dub body double for the next four minutes, please? ah know. I've been like, okay, so it's going to be fine. You just stood over me.
00:06:09
Speaker
ah Yeah, and then I would have asked the same of you, obviously. Yeah. hey i've got i've got I've got to phone that horrible woman next door. yeah um Yeah. I can vi how does how does it feel? If I've got to make a phone call, not sure how it is for you, Martin, but if I've got make a phone call, I do feel it in my stomach.
00:06:33
Speaker
It's not like ah like a big stone in my stomach. It's like a little piece of gravel in my stomach. Oh, God, I've got make a call. And I prepare myself mentally for it. Oh, it's that it's that preparation, right?
00:06:47
Speaker
Where you're, if you're making the the phone call, you almost have to like rehearse the phone call in your head yeah and like just kind of play act out in your mind before you actually make that call.
ADHD and Hypervigilance in Communication
00:07:01
Speaker
Especially I find if it's to like a professional outfit, like if you're phoning like a ah doctor's office or a...
00:07:08
Speaker
you know, anywhere like like that way or where you know. your accountant. Your accountant. God, I just i just see the worst email him. I don't. ah But if you have to call your accountant, talk us through that, Martin.
00:07:23
Speaker
but Occasionally. yeah I know. So we're so so that is...
00:07:31
Speaker
and the other thing is is that as you're talking, yeah you get no visual cues in the conversation. So like you can't see their eyes. You can't see their facial expressions.
00:07:45
Speaker
it's so yeah ah So you have to like really concentrate. like ah like Almost all of your brain cells are like focused on this yeah one simple... phone call.
00:07:56
Speaker
But maybe you've opened a can of worms there, Martin, because if you if if you take it for granted-ish, there are no, in ADHD, well, there are no absolutes. Okay.
00:08:08
Speaker
But generally... We kind of tend to be hypervigilant, right? If you're a phone to someone, you can't see the signs. So if, okay, we're hypervigilant, therefore we're quite sensitive and we're good at reading the room.
00:08:22
Speaker
So guess what? On the phone, we can't read the room. Right. So you don't know what they're thinking. You can't read their body language. No. you know No.
00:08:34
Speaker
It's tricky. i just That's an interesting thing, isn't it? There's something in that, you know. There is. Just thinking about it. know. And then the other thing I find hard about the whole phone calls is that
00:08:49
Speaker
i think I think I've got used to, um if if you're online and you're texting or you're commenting or stuff, someone will say something and then you can like sit there and think about it and ah process it for for a while and then you can text back, right?
00:09:03
Speaker
Whereas on a phone call, it's like, no, I want that out. I'll ask you a question. I want an answer right now. Now, come on. Now. Can't think about it. Right. Yes.
00:09:14
Speaker
So my poor brain is like doing a lot of work. Yeah. In that one phone call. Yeah. Or what if you're on the phone with someone who likes to have long conversations on the phone and they're not going to be easily like swayed by you saying, oh, so anyway, you know, like you said.
00:09:38
Speaker
And you like you try all your little tricks of the trade to kind of cut the conversation off And they're like they're just going for it. Right. Like with my friend Sergio in Palermo, he called me once and he said, Paul, um he had just had a prostate operation.
00:09:56
Speaker
And he said, Paul, I don't want to bore you with the details of my prostate operation. Right. Right. And I said, oh, oh yeah, don don't worry about that. It's fine. He went on for about an hour.
00:10:07
Speaker
ah Bless him. About his prostate operation. Lovely. And all the shenanigans after post-op. Gory details. I know. went through all. ah thing For him, it's it's easy. For him, it's normal.
00:10:22
Speaker
For me, it's it was, how what's the right word? It was excruciating. No, it's a bit strong. It was uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable.
00:10:34
Speaker
You know what? you you You know it's a really bad phone call for that when you find yourself and you realize that
Strategies for Managing Phone Conversations
00:10:41
Speaker
that that you're just lying on the on the floor. Right. Like if like all the energy is drained you and you're literally just just lying on the on the floor with you with your phone.
00:10:51
Speaker
Oh, you know what I do, though? I pace the room. oh yeah, that's helpful. Very helpful. pace. I pace. Up and down. Or I had to another friend, another ah Palermo friend, female.
00:11:06
Speaker
She said she was a bit offended because she said, oh, it would be nice if you called me at least once a week and, you know, ask me how I was doing. All right. but oh were you Were you actually going out with her at the time?
00:11:23
Speaker
Yes and no. Okay. Dating. Well, has we met through we met through with the idea of dating. Then we worked out that it wasn't going to happen.
00:11:36
Speaker
It's like, oh, let's just stay friends. Then clearly she she wanted to be way much more than friends, even though we'd agreed we were just friends. All right, okay. So, God, that was difficult.
00:11:48
Speaker
Yeah. That was hard. You know what? That's a little bit of pool life coming to the surface. It was, yeah. ah little little bit of pool life coming coming to the surface it was yeah I love it. so It's actually a much longer story, but we haven't got time.
00:12:07
Speaker
Right. Yeah. so fun when when When it comes to those long conversations and those people that you know, it's just, I just...
00:12:19
Speaker
do back in the day which would be um i would answer the phone and it'd be them and I'd say oh cool I've got 10 minutes because I'm going out to the shops or whatever right so it would be like so I that's good tactics I gave them a window and then at some point I could go right well I have to go sorry and and and that was my escape out I remember that being a thing.
00:12:51
Speaker
Yeah. I must bring that up back, actually. Yeah. You
00:13:00
Speaker
what What did I mention? You mentioned, because this this is actually, like but this is the second time we've recorded this episode because we had a technical problems.
00:13:11
Speaker
In the last one that turns out wasn't registered, wasn't so recorded. Martin, you talked about the thing a phenomenon in the 70s when used to get like dirty callers.
00:13:24
Speaker
Yes, I did. And you had an aunt. Tell us that story, Martin, about your aunt. Oh, blimey. My aunt, my aunt. So, yeah, mom my auntie Het, bless her little soul, she was only about like four foot nothing.
00:13:41
Speaker
She was like a little tiny little woman. She was fantastic. she was fan fantastic And, yeah, so back in the 70s, she said, oh She says, oh, I had a phone call the other day.
00:13:57
Speaker
And we're all there and we kind of go, what? She says, oh, yeah, some guy said that that he wanted me to strip.
00:14:12
Speaker
And thought, oh, my God, that is terrible. And she thought he meant stripping wallpaper.
00:14:24
Speaker
She thought, ah oh, why why is he why is he asking me about whether I strip wallpaper or not? and She said, well, yeah, I do, um but I only do it at home. I don't do it for other people.
00:14:39
Speaker
for other people And she and then then she hung up. And ah I think it it it was my my mum that went, down oh, yeah, I think that was a dirty phone call.
00:14:51
Speaker
I don't think he was asking about your... po it wouldn It wouldn't be the strangest sexual fetish that I've heard of.
00:15:01
Speaker
Woolpaper stripping, you know. oh someone Yeah, maybe. I don't know. of Not in the 70s. It was a strange time. 70s weren't big.
00:15:13
Speaker
70s wasn't a big, wasn't you know, fetish was like from the 90s onwards, wasn't it? Surely. I guess. 80s onwards. Right. But yeah, I mean, like, right, I was actually thinking about this because of it because I think as soon as a phone was invented, men just seemed to have jumped on it a way as as a way ah be dirty, dis dis disgusting people. Desperate.
00:15:43
Speaker
I mean, that's so. God, that's desperate. Right. So back in the 70s, it was people making dirty phone calls. And now it's like, yeah, sending dick pics. Right. I mean, that that's the kind of yea modern day version of it.
00:16:01
Speaker
There used to be situations where men would just breathe heavily down the phone. Oh, yeah, heavy breathing. Heavy breathers. thanks Yeah.
00:16:12
Speaker
And that's all they would do, which is even scarier. It's weird. weird people that's weird yeah um anyway i was listening talking about this kind of thing i was listening no watching a documentary with um it was an interview with francis bacon the um the the famous painter painter of uh of pork products no that just happened to be surname ah The painter, yeah.
Nostalgia for Rotary Phones and Etiquette
00:16:41
Speaker
And halfway through the interview, he he was the interview was at his home. And halfway through the interview, his home telephone ah went. And then we, dring, dring. And all of a sudden I had this pang of of nostalgia, right? What, for for that old ring tone, that old rotary phone? That sound.
00:17:04
Speaker
You know, when your home life was disturbed by this, bring. And everyone's phone sounded the same. no one had to You couldn't choose your ringtone. Everyone's phone sounded the same, right?
00:17:19
Speaker
And he said he ah he was very rich even then, you know even whilst he was alive, was very rich. He had an assistant. and He just like shouted, sort oh, tell them I'm busy. But it occurred to me the One of the benefits with ADHD now is at least now you can filter your calls. You couldn't then.
00:17:38
Speaker
If your phone rang, you had to answer it. And you didn't know who it was. Yeah. Oh, yeah, right. At least now can see, oh, it's it's an unknown caller or it's just someone you don't want to talk to again, you know yeah like your accountant.
00:17:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:59
Speaker
My accountant my my my my accountant has has has done me a good job this this year or last year. so um right so ah i'm So he is in my good good good books.
00:18:13
Speaker
He's saved me rather a lot of money. um I've got to change. ah we've We've had lots of conversations about this. I've got to change my accountant at the end of the year. He's just not notck not cutting the mustard.
00:18:29
Speaker
Not cutting the mustard? Well, you can't have i even have to go back to the one I had before, Martin. Oh, at least... Well, so at least I'm guessing he was competent.
00:18:43
Speaker
No, she was competent, but she also was much more patient with me. ah okay. Yeah, she's a lot more patient, but she was a long way away. She was like a four-hour drive away.
00:18:55
Speaker
Turns out I don't need to see her anyway, actually physically. What fuck can I say? I'm going to go back to her, I think. Yeah, just... She was great. Yeah, they usually have a portal, and you just, like, send over all your Yeah, yeah.
00:19:10
Speaker
Oh, totally, not yeah. Anyhow... um So one thing that really bugs me about phone calls is is is the ending part. You know, like when you kind of go, when you when you're hanging up and you do that kind of, that little dance at the end where you're kind of like, yeah all right, well, okay. um All right, well, thank thanks a lot.
00:19:34
Speaker
Yeah. All right, bye. I hate that. Especially if you're lovers and you just started dating. said No, you put the phone down.
00:19:46
Speaker
No, you put it down. No, you put the phone down. No, come on, you put the phone down. You put the phone down. You put the phone down. Let's put it down at the same time.
00:19:58
Speaker
are you still there? Oh, no. That didn't work. Oh,
00:20:05
Speaker
I'm just wondering whether I've actually ever done that, and I don't think I ever have. I don't think that's ever been a thing. i know that I've seen it on TV. yeah Yes, but it's the same for me. It's like small talk. you know if you look i can't I'm not good at getting out of calls unless you say, look, like you were saying before, if you've got the tactic, you say, look, um i've I've got to be out of the house in like two minutes, so maybe we could talk another time.
00:20:33
Speaker
not
00:20:36
Speaker
yeah just make it quick just give me the bullet points of this call thank you that would be nice yeah you know what it's it's funny because um went actually ah ah think have I haveve actually finished I'm just looking down my thing no I think I've pretty much covered covered all my things I want to talk about about phone calls but so I wanted to kind of go on to like the The phones that we've had in history. tree tree
00:21:10
Speaker
Yes. um And we started off like you with a rotary, with an old rotary olive green British Telecom yes phone.
The Evolution of Phones: From Rotary to Mobile
00:21:24
Speaker
Yeah. There were generally like three colours, maybe four. We had the olive green, but you could get a like a creamy coloured.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yes. If you wanted to. Yes. A thick brown. You know, your grandparents would have a brown because your grandparents in those days said everything was brown.
00:21:47
Speaker
Who would buy a brown phone? That's horrible. Yeah. I know. And yeah the the the the thing about those old phones was, and we were talking about this, um is that, you know, is that you had to dial the number with your finger in this rotary, you know, dial all way around a like yeah and that was yeah And I was saying the other day that ah when I had my own company back in the late 90s, I think it was, um I decided, stupidly, it turned turned out, that I would be really cool because I was a cool graphic design company.
00:22:27
Speaker
that I would have the old rotary phone as as the ah the company phone. that There was just me and Steve. um but But I quickly learned how boring...
00:22:42
Speaker
It is to dial on a rotary phone after I got yeah used to having a, I think I had a flip phone at that point. But so um it was just like like, oh my God, I've got to, it takes like half an hour just to ring a number. and It just drove me insane. And I ah threw it out in the end.
00:23:01
Speaker
It was like, I can't, i you can't go backwards. It's so hard to go backwards. phone world it's so It always seemed strange to me that if you were to to call an emergency, you had to dial 999 if you're in the UK, and it would seem bizarre.
00:23:19
Speaker
But now I'm just talking about that, mentioning that. Now I think I know why. ah Because if you had to dial 999, it's much less likely you would dial it by a mistake.
00:23:33
Speaker
I think that's right. ah think you could be right. i think it was the most un... Yeah, it was... it was Yeah. But it is the longest number it would take to actually get through to anyone.
00:23:47
Speaker
So if you're like you dying, they're on the floor, you have to type nine. It was like, had to dial nine. It was all the way around. Endless, yeah. All the way back. I'm dying. Yeah. never While your blood's spurting out everywhere, you're having a heart attack or whatever. It's like, Jesus Christ, who ever thought of this?
00:24:08
Speaker
Whereas in the States, it's 9911. So at least you only have to do one. It's what in the States? 911. 911. 911.
00:24:17
Speaker
nine yeah nine one one Right. But so soce susceptible to to ah mistakes, isn't it? You're more open to mistakes, dialing it by mistake.
00:24:30
Speaker
Yeah, right. Okay. um Just save. Also, the... Sorry, Rudy's... Rudy's humping his bed at the moment. I know. Well, I can see that he's like... He's like he's getting very... He's throwing it around....playful with his bed.
00:24:45
Speaker
Back there. A bit of dignity, please. Rudy, bit of dignity. Okay. Anyway, so Paul's giving is his is is dog a little little and little chat. Just took him to one side. yeah Oh, God.
00:25:04
Speaker
but i didn't need it i know. um So, yeah, if you're on if you're on a uute there is ah there is a show
00:25:17
Speaker
There's a show going on. I think it's about to... It's almost finished. It's about to light a cigarette, I think. um um Anyway,
00:25:31
Speaker
so, yeah. Sex lines. Then... um
00:25:38
Speaker
Do you... It just brought up because your dog's humping the bed. It just reminded me of, like, Sex lines back in the day. Yeah, the dial-up things. There was adverts in magazines and in papers and stuff. It massive, wasn't it?
00:25:55
Speaker
Yeah, you'd phone up. Yeah, yeah. To do what, though? I can't remember because I never did it, honestly, Gough. I have definitely phoned a couple of times.
00:26:08
Speaker
um Sex chat thing. Yeah. Yeah. It was basically there was ah a woman on the on the other end of the phone and you would and then and then what would happen was is that they would keep you on the phone as long as possible because it was like, I don't know, 10 pence a second or something. So it was like some pretty high charge. So so they they would just kind of like ramble and just kind like not do much for for a while.
00:26:41
Speaker
And then you go, Jesus, I'm spending like so much money. And then you just go, like what am I doing? You just hang up. At least that that was my my experience was like, oh, my God, I'm burning money. Yeah.
00:26:53
Speaker
For no reason. Yeah. But they were at around that time, there were a lot of advertising as well, like on Channel 4 for those sex lines. it was They were like everywhere.
00:27:07
Speaker
with like, they had really weird weird jingles. Oh, on the air, the TV ads, yeah. Yeah. Sexy women waiting for you. Exactly. Something like that.
00:27:18
Speaker
um Maybe they've all... That's a good rendition, actually, Martin. I used to work as one. In fact, hang on. Did I used to know someone who worked as one?
00:27:30
Speaker
Oh,
00:27:33
Speaker
think ah think I did. I think I used to know someone who worked at one for a while. and Okay. And I think, yeah yeah, she had a very sexy voice.
00:27:46
Speaker
i so i i I remember that. And she phoned up Radio 1 once, you know like a sort of a Radio 1, BBC Radio 1. It was like um it was the Chris Evans show if If you remember remember him, he was like a big DJ back in the in the late 90s.
00:28:09
Speaker
um And she phoned up. for some reason, and and she has a very sexy voice, and Chris Evans kept having her back on, like, every day for, like, a for for a week or so.
00:28:24
Speaker
she she would She would have to phone up because she just had that kind of, like, that voice that a good phone phone voice.
00:28:35
Speaker
I don't have a good phone voice. i have a terrible phone voice.
00:28:41
Speaker
um Yeah. um i'm gonna Does anyone like sound of their own voice? Well, I suppose some people do. Some people definitely do.
00:28:52
Speaker
um Yeah, it is. like i don't, clearly. um Back to rotary phones. yeah And we were talking about the American 911 and Yeah. um You were saying this the the the other day that um that the length of chord that you that the yes the that the Americans had...
00:29:18
Speaker
and between the handset and the actual wall phone was immense you would see them like walking around half the house with this long cord exactly that never no one ever did that in the uk and you think oh you just buy buy i don't know eight meters of telephone cable and you could walk around the house no Well, yeah, we had like max max we had was about a meter and a half.
00:29:47
Speaker
Right. It was it was short, which meant that as the phone was always in the middle, know, in the hallway, everyone could.
00:29:59
Speaker
but On your phone to your friends or whatever, it was like everyone could hear you. There was no privacy. he had a little table. You had a little table. Oh, yeah. had a little special table with a little notepad by it. Yes.
00:30:13
Speaker
For notes. Yes. Clearly. That's right. Very important. Or if you were posh, you had a little Rolidex.
00:30:25
Speaker
We're not Rolidex, like the precursor to the Rolidex had little buttons on it. And you like pop press T or W and you ring up Martin West. All right. yeah we had something We had something like that.
00:30:38
Speaker
But my my parents had a really bad taste in furniture. Everything was like fake antique. All right. nice nice Yeah. Still does, actually.
00:30:50
Speaker
and Still do. like Reproduction antiques. God. right yeah I can still picture the little table their parents had for the for our phone. who Out in the hallway. eddiehe Anyway.
00:31:05
Speaker
But yeah, we didn't that whole... remember watching programs, you know American programs. They're like, oh my God, look how long their telephone cables are. They're wandering around the house, having calls, making calls. And then, all right, so rotary phones eventually went went away, and then there was the cordless phone, which which which was like had a little antenna on it and had like very futuristic like push buttons that you see. It didn't dial anymore. it was like buttons. Yes.
00:31:37
Speaker
yeah and then And they were big. They were big. but They were big. Right. Because ah i was i was watching Friends early episode, think it was like season two or something of Friends the the other day, and they had a cordless phone.
00:31:56
Speaker
was like, oh, look, it's like one of those cordless phones with with the antenna. And then he just like, the character just just threw the phone on the on on the couch. I was like, Oh, yeah, we would.
00:32:08
Speaker
I would lose the phone. It would ring and they'll be like, where the hell's the phone? Or want make a call? Where's the phone? Lifting up sofa cushions and like. Where the hell is this goddamn thing?
00:32:21
Speaker
I don't remember our house ever having a cordless home phone. I can't picture it in mind. I'm sure we did. There must have been an evolution. Basically what I'm saying.
00:32:35
Speaker
Yeah, there was. But we evolved into into the into the flip phones or the cell phones. Yeah, well, not quite because my dad had one of the first mobile phones.
00:32:48
Speaker
It was a Motorola, and it came with its own briefcase because the battery was so big because had like a lockup big high-flying job with a with a chauffeur, and he had like this massive case.
00:33:03
Speaker
They used to carry around. He had like one of the first ever mobile phones. I remember. Wow. It was huge. I do remember the b like, I think they were like, were they like mid eighty s um But i I definitely remember a guy that came to work to repair the photocopier. And this photocopy was huge. it was like a monster. It was the size of a room.
00:33:30
Speaker
um and he And he pulled out this huge sort of brick phone, as I think was called, on this suitcase. It was like, oh, mate, special people with their big special phones. Yeah.
00:33:47
Speaker
It was like that, wasn't it? It was like, oh, my God, you're special. Yeah, yeah. Can I touch your phone? Well, because that was the precursor to like, it it was very much in London a ah status symbol at that time.
00:34:02
Speaker
It was. it was It was for yuppies. You know, if you if you're like a high flyer, you had to have your mobile phone. And they were bricks, basically, like with an with a very long and like aerial.
00:34:16
Speaker
Right. And then we had flip flip phone, the clam shell. Flip phone's a clam or oyster. What are they called? Oyster phones. Clam, oyster. Yeah.
00:34:31
Speaker
Yeah. And they've come back into fashion again, haven't they? They've come like, i could i could I really get, actually, the next phone I get, I like the idea of a clamshell, I have to admit.
00:34:44
Speaker
Clamshell phone. Right. I think it's really smart. There are people out there that that went back to kind of like the kind of old... style analog phone where you just basically just make calls and and text and that's kind of it yes it's a lot simpler could you do that do you could you see yourself ever doing that probably not no don't think i could either i i could not so mean um uh when i first came came to the states ah that's what the phones were there were
00:35:18
Speaker
basically these flip phones with an aerial that you pulled pulled up and everyone was on them ah at that point. and And I worked for, um I worked in, ive bought so I started up an ad agency office in New York and we had T-Mobile, we had AT&T and we had Sony Ericsson phones.
00:35:42
Speaker
um So I was like, I was knee deep in the phone world back in in in those days. And where I came from in the UK, we were very used to texting.
00:35:56
Speaker
and We would text quite quite a lot. But when I came to the States, I was told, I was saying this to you yesterday, I was told... um outright that Americans wouldn't text.
00:36:09
Speaker
We like to talk too much. We're not interested in this text thing. That's strange. We aren't texters. ah know. yeah And they, and you know, lo and behold, Americans are just as big a texters as everyone else.
00:36:25
Speaker
Is that because English are basically shyer, they're more timid than Americans? So it was ah it's a good, it's a for if you're shy, it's a better option. Americans are less shy than English, I think. Yeah.
00:36:40
Speaker
I think so too. But even them, even the Americans succumbed to the joys of not talking to anyone. It's like, thank God for that. your your Your dog's having a right old good time behind you. He's getting tired now. you you finish Oh, dear.
00:37:04
Speaker
like a cigarette And then, all right, so after flip phones,
00:37:11
Speaker
smartphones, i.e.
Smartphones: A Tool for ADHD Management
00:37:14
Speaker
the iPhone gets launched. Yeah. Whole new world. A whole new world.
00:37:23
Speaker
For better, a fool for worse. i'm and I have very conflict conflicting feelings about smartphones. Well, when they first came out, and I will say, i was I was over the moon, mate. i was i was i was tickled pink when it came out.
00:37:43
Speaker
I loved it. Yeah. For the for the yeah the reason that it had it had google had maps on it I think it had Apple maps ah at that point.
00:37:55
Speaker
But it would pull up a map of where I was and say where I was and how to get somewhere. Anything Apple... In those days when anything, Apple was really cool, right?
00:38:08
Speaker
And if you had a phone, you just felt like you were cool too, right? Oh, yeah. you Now it's like, you know, smartphone is like hundreds of different types. And actually, some would say they've been overtaken technologically by Samsung and what have you.
00:38:24
Speaker
But in those days, yeah, it was like, it was very new and very cool. ah I used to get lost as an ADHD person. I see it lost all the time, right?
00:38:39
Speaker
I would take a wrong turning going somewhere and then I'm like, where the hell am I? yeah And then at some point I'd get, I'd even ask someone or I'd find the map book from the back of the car. I'd try and work out where it was. And it was like, and and and that was my world and I hated it. And as soon as the iPhone came in
00:39:00
Speaker
I just have to turn left here and right here. i was like, oh, this is, this is
00:39:08
Speaker
the end of getting lost. Yeah. Ever again. Yes. What last about, 18 months ago, I had a situation where i had ah I started a new job in a new profession in a new town and teaching, you know, like 700 students at high school.
00:39:27
Speaker
And the my best friend at that for the first four months was the the Google Maps or Apple Maps. Right. Because i I could get to that school and not have to think about how I was going to get there. ah religion is saved it really saved me from, you know, it gave me 40 minutes in the car when I didn't have to think about taking a left or a right.
00:39:50
Speaker
And it made a big difference to my ADHD brain at that time. Also... you could get lost. You could go down a road that looked interesting that you didn't know where it went, but it felt like it could be somewhere cool.
00:40:08
Speaker
And you could go down that road and know that you could get back to where you want to be. It allowed you to to to to get lost, as it were, to kind of like yeah explore yeah and not think that yeah you might kind of die out in the countryside somewhere.
00:40:29
Speaker
Yeah. No, no, totally. But having said that, I got lost once, even if I had Google Maps. I got lost in the middle of um Sicily in the car and almost no petrol left.
00:40:43
Speaker
Okay. And Google sent me completely the wrong way. ah Google is not infallible. It makes massive mistakes. It made me turn to a certain point. It wanted to want me to turn left down were basically a a tractor track.
00:41:00
Speaker
Oh, right. And I literally, my my fuel was on zero and I couldn't find a petrol station. And I was going out of my mind. Yes.
00:41:11
Speaker
And what happened? I'm invested.
00:41:17
Speaker
I did manage to, well, even if I, but in the meantime, ah went down one road and then I, I lost faith that i was going in the right direction. So I did like a, a three point turn and bashed my car into a wall in frustration. Yeah.
00:41:36
Speaker
Yeah. Oh dear. Actually it was a rental car so it wasn't, yeah. And yeah, God, that was so stressful. Oh blimey. ah remember like, That was a nightmare.
00:41:48
Speaker
Saying, saying that, this is like another little quick car story. You know, multiple lanes of traffic and cars and they're kind of like merging into like two lanes. So say they're like three or four lanes and they're merging.
00:42:04
Speaker
you have, ah right And then there was at one point where there was me in this other car and this other car wouldn't let me in. Right.
00:42:15
Speaker
And we were just getting closer and closer and closer until we were about to hit each other. And, uh, eventually i rolled the, the, and I said, this is a higher car.
00:42:34
Speaker
Another guy went, right oh, okay. And then he just backed off ah okay and invite it and let me in. No. yes i had I had a similar situation in Napoli.
00:42:50
Speaker
Exactly the same. And we came to, we basically, we we it came, it was two laser went down into one and we were like side by side and he just edged in front of me and then made a maneuver and stopped sideways in front of me, ah wound down his window, literally wound down the window because it was an old car.
00:43:12
Speaker
And for the next two, two minutes stared me out. Two minutes, right, so giving you the hard Paddington stare. Exactly. just stared me out.
00:43:23
Speaker
And, like, I understood from that that he had a gun underneath his, in my imagination, he had a gun underneath his. He probably didn't. But in my imagination, because he was like, he was very menacing. Okay.
00:43:36
Speaker
And it seemed like after two hours he stopped staring at me and he went on his way. weird. Oh, very weird. Anyway. I was having band practice once, right, in in a hall, me and the guys having a band practice, we're playing away.
00:43:53
Speaker
And the guy who lived next door to the rehearsal hall drove, got in his car and he drove up his up his driveway, went round and then into the driveway of the hall.
00:44:07
Speaker
So literally he drove next door. And then he came into the rehearsal room and he was holding a big-ass gun. And he said, and he said and rehearsal's over.
00:44:20
Speaker
And we went, okay, then. We just packed up our stuff and left. No. No. Yeah. Oh, my God.
00:44:31
Speaker
yeah yeah kate Seriously, off off topic here. um ah Okay. so we We need GPS to get us back to the right. Yeah, we do. ah Okay. Last thoughts on on on phones. I mean, obviously, they're good for...
00:44:49
Speaker
they good four if If you have ADHD, well, at least for me, they are a real lifesaver in that I can be out anywhere and I can, you know, if I have to then make an appointment or if I have to put something in the diary or the calendar or a reminder or yeah something, like they're super helpful for that. Yeah, definitely.
00:45:16
Speaker
I mean, you know, like I often like pull over and and write a note. I pull over in the car and and write a note in my phone because I think, oh, God, I don't want to forget this. And yeah, I totally.
00:45:30
Speaker
But throw there's there's an element of phones that when I was doing the research for this episode, right, I would i had a bit of an insight. i realized that me having a phone, ah smartphone,
00:45:48
Speaker
coincides with when i when I started to stop um overthinking so much generally and like, um what's it called? um um Catastrophizing because the phone has been like really good in this, in that way in that I could just open up my phone and go down a rabbit hole of like documentaries or something on YouTube or whatever.
00:46:12
Speaker
and Okay. And, and get myself, get get out of my own thoughts, okay? Right. And it's been a massive, it helps me massively in that way.
00:46:24
Speaker
It definitely coincides with that. I have been working on myself because I was freaking exhausted with, you know, overthinking. I think, though, as I say, it does coincide with me having a smartphone and the smartphone giving me that possibility to...
00:46:40
Speaker
get me out of my own head does that make sense yeah yeah no i mean i think we also i also use it to get out my own head and as far as like ah i'm just gonna disassociate on my phone and just and just yeah exactly and just uh you know scroll and look at stuff yeah not do what i'm supposed to be doing
00:47:06
Speaker
Which reminds me, socially, it's really useful. If you've got a phone in your hand and you can you don't want to talk to someone, you pretend that you're just about to you're using your phone and they're going they're not going to come up to you and talk.
00:47:21
Speaker
yeah Absolutely. absolutely which is Especially the ADHD community, that's a biggie. especially if I'm out walking the dog. So, so I don't end up like, so people people like, like, yeah, so I can just say ignore people. Yeah. It's, it's, yeah, I like that.
00:47:41
Speaker
That's a massive positive, isn't it? That makes it, yeah can make a big difference. Yeah. People just like leave you alone. All right, well, um yeah everyone can just jump in the comments and tell us what you love stroke hate about phones or, oh, you know what? i Yeah. one One story that um just that i that I just remembered that I was supposed to say when we were talking about about rotary phones was,
00:48:15
Speaker
was um yeah um And it hasn't ever happened on um my cell phone um or anything, is that one day i decided, going go and phone my mate Steve and maybe, you know, have a conversation like, I want to go to HMV and buy an album. Are you interested in coming kind of conversation? So I go up to the phone and then and then i and then I dial his number.
00:48:44
Speaker
um And there's no ringtone. There's just silence. And then and then a voice goes, hello? And it's Steve, who I just called.
00:48:56
Speaker
And yeah what happened was was that he he had phoned me at the exact time that I'd phoned him, and we and we both were talking to each other. it like It's like the weirdest, weirdest moment. That's amazing.
00:49:12
Speaker
I know. Anyway. But those were the times, Martin, when when with your mates. You just intuitively knew where and when your mates were available.
00:49:24
Speaker
you know Yes. You just knew it. Saturday. That was one of the benefits before smartphones. there was this intuitive like feeling like, okay, Martin's going to be, it's what is it? It's is's Friday.
00:49:37
Speaker
So I was like, Martin's going to be probably free to chat. I'm going to give him a call. just You just knew, you know, or if you wanted to say play football or go buy an album, you just like intuitively knew, you know, you just so somehow weirdly your ideas would coincide with your mates because you just, everything was much more intuitive.
00:50:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think we were, yeah, we were, it's interesting because I feel like I also know what a lot of people are doing generally, like because I'm on social media, I get a sense of people's lives as well. Yeah.
00:50:19
Speaker
So actually I could like i could argue that i but I've actually have a sense of what people are doing on a much broader global level. level than I ever, ever, ever, ever. Yeah, that's true.
00:50:33
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Anyway. All right. Phones. Good or bad. Let's find out. Let's go and rate phones. um Yeah.
00:50:45
Speaker
Let's go and do that. Is it a dopamine hit or is it a better than that thing? phones is it a dopamine hit or is it a burnout thing so um obviously it's this one's going to be tight i feel i feel it's tight for me dopamine i'm going to be specifically for related dopamine specifically specifically talking about dopamine and my adhd and phones
00:51:17
Speaker
yes The first thing that comes to mind is the phone for me definitely stimulates my endless infinite curiosity for information. It's like I've got this encyclopedia in my little but it might pocket and I love that.
00:51:34
Speaker
And I love the fact that I can just like find out like I did yesterday with one of my online students. ah We need to look up, you know, and elephants and the the Laos population, their relationship with elephants.
00:51:49
Speaker
I'm not kidding you. and ah were And were elephants indigenous to Laos or not? And you any it's like before, you know, you'd have to go to the library and you'd be lucky if someone hadn't taken that book out.
00:52:02
Speaker
So it's it just totally endlessly feeds my favourite dopamine hit, which is my curiosity, right? So in that sense, I'm going to give it an eight, a long way around saying eight.
00:52:18
Speaker
All right. I'm also going to give it, seeing as it's such dopamine machine, going to give it high. So sometimes it's like 9.9, right up there.
00:52:35
Speaker
That's high. That's very high. That's high. You're bending the needle. I am. I am. Bending the freaking needle on that one. Blimey. That's the highest we've had so far. okay Burnout. You go first. what's What are you on the burnout? um All right. So I think phones can generally...
00:52:54
Speaker
of your time and your energy than you really need it to. So I kind of feel like um actually having to, I'm actually rethinking my score. So i'm um I'm going to say that it's about a six for me.
00:53:13
Speaker
So... A bunch of burnout, but but I mean, yeah, I'm probably being too too too too too generous, to be honest. But what say you, Mr. Tompt? I'm going to give burnout a high. I'm going high. I'm going up to a nine. A nine? Because it just...
00:53:35
Speaker
causes me a lot of hassle. Probably what really tips it over it's just you know the amount of people that can ah because I'm really hyper vigilant and really protective about my private space and time and these phones are just constant endless stream of people trying to get their nose into my life, you know, whether it's you know, from publicity or pop-up ads.
00:54:06
Speaker
It just really drains me. Or that just possibility that, you know, someone you don't want to talk to is just going to leave. They're going to try to phone you.
00:54:19
Speaker
Then they'll send an SMS. Then they'll send an email. You know, just like invasion of private life, I suppose, is thing.
00:54:30
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's my problem. ah You get to Taylor Swift. She's like phoning you up. You're like, oh, God, it's bloody Taylor Swift again. And then she's like, right, and then she's texting you. And you're like, oh, Jesus, come on, Swifty. Blimey.
00:54:49
Speaker
Leave me alone, woman. I did actually. Someone once called me, a lady from the States, called me by mistake. It was a roll number. We ended up chatting for three hours.
00:55:02
Speaker
Oh. It was a wrong number. We never exchanged names, I don't think. We never called each other ever again. And we we got on like a household fight. was complete It was completely just a wrong call it a wrong number.
00:55:17
Speaker
Right. It was really nice. That is really nice. I've just only remembered to quite related a very similar phone call. um
00:55:27
Speaker
me Me and Stevie Whitmore, we were like, um and And the boys and we were having a drink in in in the in the pub. This is kind of going back. This is like in the noughties back at 20 years ago.
00:55:44
Speaker
And we were having a drink in the pub and one of the guys comes out the toilets and he says, oh, man, I've i've i've just seen this a sticker for a really funny band.
00:55:57
Speaker
And it was called, the the the band's name was called Ken Dodd's Dad's Dead. Right. Right. So Ken Dodd is ah is an old 70s UK comedy guy. And it was Ken Dodd's Dad's Dead. And we thought that that was hilarious.
00:56:16
Speaker
And then about a month after, I'm sitting there at my phone and it's a wrong number. And this girl's chatting to me.
00:56:27
Speaker
Like you say, we're just like chatting away. And then we get onto the subject of bands.
00:56:35
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I used to be in a band. Yeah, the ah the the band was called Ken Dodd's Dad's Dead. was like, I saw your sticker in the boys' toilets about a month ago. Yes.
00:56:50
Speaker
Amazing. crazy amazing coincidences um all right so that's the scoring so you've you've scored uh phones to be slightly to to be slightly worse um and i um so yes as a as a bad thing and and i've gone the the other way and and and i've yeah and i've given them a sort of positive so there we go uh what's your thoughts at home let us let us know right well uh time is a cracking on so we should jump in the tractor we should go over to ah alexandra's haunted haunted inn so let's jump out of the pub or where we are the park where's the park obviously
00:57:43
Speaker
I swear to God, that tractor's louder than it used to be.
00:57:49
Speaker
Yeah, it is. Yeah, okay, so Alexandra's haunted in and she's left a note for us. um So this is about last week's episode, which was about hats.
00:58:02
Speaker
Good old hats. um Yeah. The episode 102, I guess. um And she says that Greek people don't wear hats much anymore.
00:58:14
Speaker
So a hat feels like the opposite of of masking. I feel stressed thinking the attention wearing a hat might might bring. Yeah, which is a fair point, isn't it?
00:58:27
Speaker
You might stand out. You might not want to stand out wearing a fancy-ass hat. I guess there's a difference between men and between men women. Men are more wear hats much more likely to wear hats for for practical reasons. We're were ladies, more of a, you know, oh, look at me kind of more of a look at me effect.
00:58:49
Speaker
oh four For fashion. um yeah Or I would say on the beach, um I would say definitely um a bit of both and definitely like cuts down on that sunlight and all that other.
00:59:06
Speaker
ya Yeah, yeah, um my is yeah okay um says Yeah, good point. Well put. All right. And and then a shout out i'll a shout out here to Carol, who's our Minister of Snacks, who did a lot of great hat-related posts last week. Okay.
00:59:26
Speaker
okay I'll have to check those out. haven't seen those. I tip my hat to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Check them out. All right. Well, that's so don't forget. um Yeah. Yes. Send your.
00:59:41
Speaker
So yeah, go on. Your feedback is vital to us. And yeah, so it's so it's always great to get your comments. So write to us, write to us. And maybe we'll read root your comments out and then on the on the next episode.
00:59:54
Speaker
Perfect. Perfect. And next week, at least me to say that next week. It's your turn. Yeah, my turn to select the theme. Next we're going to talk about ADHD books and bookshops therein.
01:00:09
Speaker
Oh, books and bookshops. Oh, like Yeah. the whole multi-sensory, I suppose, experience of what it means to have ADHD and, and, and relating being with sparsing time with books.
01:00:28
Speaker
Lovely. What a great subject. Right. Well, that just leaves me to say ADHDville is delivered fresh every Tuesday to all providers of fine podcasts. Please subscribe to the pod and rate us most amazing.
01:00:42
Speaker
And feel free to correspond at will in the comments. But wait, there's more. If you wish to see our beautiful, beautiful faces, then you can s sally forth to the YouTubes and the TikToks.
01:00:56
Speaker
yeah Email us at ADHDville.gmail.com. But in the meantime, be fucking kind to yourself.
01:01:05
Speaker
And I beseech you, fellow ADHDs, fare thee well with gladness of heart. Say goodbye, Rudy. You're about to starve this week. There, says the mayor. That's that special guest.