That Sinking Feeling. Episode 3. 2,000 gallons of sulfuric Acid and a submarine full of pancake batter.
Elizabeth Rynecki
Even the most well-adjusted teen struggles with emotional angst and physical changes. Hair in new places. Heartbreak. The dawning realization that life is more complicated than their childhood led them to believe. Zits.
But teens with ADHD often face an extra set of challenges. Puberty seems to aggravate their symptoms. The increased demands from their parents, teachers, and peers taxes their executive function at a time when they’re not equipped to handle it.
And in my son’s junior year of high school, his teenage hormones stirred up his ADHD in ways that made everything harder. His emotions became frighteningly intense.
I don’t have ADHD, but my younger son Owen does. And I’m the daughter of a ship salvage engineer. This podcast is about both those things.
Owen
COVID blurs everything together significantly. But I — everything just suddenly felt significantly harder. My patterns were broken, my old coping mechanisms stopped working really, and everything just became a massive push to just do anything. Like basic assignments that I could hammer out an hour with some grumbling became like full day long affairs. I just felt lost and out of control of myself, like I lacked understanding of what was really going on in my body.
Before, I had thought I had a fairly good grip. But clearly I didn’t as much as I thought.
Elizabeth Rynecki
And while Owen’s impulsivity hadn’t gotten him into trouble with risky behavior, his over-the-top negativity sometimes veered into aggressive threats that terrified his teachers and other students. Like the time Owen wrote about the Boomtown Rats song “I Don’t Like Mondays,” a song about a 1979 school shooting. And then a student posted an out-of-context quote about it on Snapchat, and the way the kid wrote about Owen, it sounded like Owen was making a threat.
Then a few parents heard about it and called in a warning to the school that my kid was a potential school shooter. Which he wasn’t, but he does tend to mouth off in ways that frighten people who don’t know him well, and make them more willing to believe any negative thing that they may hear, no matter how unlikely.
And then Covid happened, and Owen’s school went remote. And Owen, like a lot of us during that time, felt lonely and isolated. He started to spiral into a very dark space. He struggled to focus on school and began flunking classes, and that made him even more depressed because he felt stupid, worthless, suicidal.
And although Owen never hurt himself, one afternoon the school told us we should take Owen to the emergency room. And once we were there, the doctors tried to decide if he should be involuntarily detained for a 72 hour psychiatric evaluation. This was bad news for Owen, and for us. We didn’t think a hold would help Owen. We thought it would make things worse. And as we spoke to the on-call doctor, reassuring everyone that we thought he’d be okay, I panicked. Not about suicide, but about his future. I worried that Owen might not finish high school. And if he didn’t finish high school and didn’t go to college and didn’t launch into adulthood, that would mean … I didn’t exactly know what that would mean.
The vision I’d crafted for Owen’s future depended on solid high school transcripts, stellar college essays, glowing teacher recommendations, and excellent test scores. And if he didn’t have that, what would he have? I started my own negative spiral of all the possible bad outcomes ten, 20, or even more years down the line.
In the midst of my descent into despair, I remembered a story my dad, the ship salvage engineer, had once told me. A story that is as much about rescuing a ship as it is about thinking differently and finding creative solutions to particularly tough problems. But to tell the story, I have to take you back more than a hundred years.
In 1916, the United States had not yet declared war on Germany, but war seemed imminent, and President Woodrow Wilson was concerned about the country’s obsolete military equipment. The Navy was most concerned about the German U-boat threat. During the First World War, nearly 400 German submarines sank almost 5000 ships. Seeing the effectiveness of the U-boats, the U.S. Navy decided it desperately needed its own fleet. So it started a crash building program that ultimately produced nearly 100 subs.
The Navy already had a few bases along the West Coast, but they wanted one more. So in late 1916, the US Navy sent three submarines and a resupply ship south along the west coast to check out their options.
It might surprise you, because it definitely was news to me, that World War One-era submarines were relatively fast surface ships that had the ability to submerge for only short periods of time. On the surface, they could use their diesel engines. Underwater, they were limited to battery power, and early batteries were huge, heavy, and didn’t store much power. So when submarines went below the surface, they were like an early smartphone: very slow, and in need of frequent recharges.
When the fleet arrived at Humboldt Bay, just off the northern California coast, it was foggy. Visibility was low. As the H-3 looked for the harbor entrance, they couldn’t actually see much of anything. And since subs in 1916 were not equipped with radar or sonar, the captain hoped he might be able to see the jetties marking the entrance to the bay. And he thought he spotted a buoy.
And then, as my dad, the ship’s salvage engineer will tell you, mistakes were made.
Alex Rynecki
They did some poor navigation and ran aground. Things like that happen all the time. Ships run aground all the time.
Elizabeth Rynecki
As the submarine hit the sandy shore, everything went wrong. I found a recording of author John Humboldt Gates describing what happened next.
Jon Humbolt Gates
The next wave came in. That sub came down hard, and it hit bottom. It jarred the whole boat.
everybody inside just fell on top of each other. They were landing on top, and they would’ve just had breakfast. And one of the — kind of funny in the midst of horror, but, the cook had all this pancake batter and — and the pancake batter landed on top of everybody. So they’re covered with pancake batter and they’re stacked on top of each other.
Elizabeth Rynecki
As the waves crashed aboard, saltwater poured into the battery compartment. With 2000 gallons of sulfuric acid in the battery chamber now leaking, the men worried that the combination of the saltwater and sulfuric acid in the batteries would form chlorine gas.
Jon Humboldt Gates
Chlorine was a weapon in World War One. I mean, chlorine gas. And so now they have fires, a subtle amount of chlorine gas. This has been ten hours that they’ve been trapped inside getting banged around. Some of these guys have been clinging to just pipes
Elizabeth Rynecki
While the increasingly desperate men aboard the sub wondered if they might be saved, the Coast Guard struggled to come up with a rescue plan. As more than a thousand locals flocked to the beach, everyone hoped there was an easy way to get the men out of the sub and onto the beach. But the waves and the tide made everything incredibly challenging. After several risky and unsuccessful attempts, the rescue team managed to make progress. More than 24 hours after going aground, the entire crew was saved. The skipper was the last man to reach the shore.
Jon Humbolt Gates
The rescue was just in time, before people would have started probably passing out and maybe, you know, more severe situations.
Alex Rynecki
And then there was the question of what to do, which is always the question in salvage. Typically you would try to pull a ship off the way it came on. That’s usually what you do. Actually, I even wrote a book on that subject. The title of the book is Theory of Strandings and the Use of Beach Gear. It’s a big book.
Elizabeth Rynecki
But the US Navy didn’t have my dad’s book back in 1916. It wasn’t published until 1968. So instead they asked for proposals to salvage the submarine, which was now deeply buried in more than six feet of sand. Multiple bids were submitted. Most were considered too expensive. The lowest was from a local lumber company. But the bid was so low that the Navy concluded they’d never be able to do the job for such a meager sum. Besides, the idea was just plain weird.
Instead of pulling the sub back into the ocean, the lumber company wanted to build a track with logs and then roll the sub across the dunes towards Humboldt Bay. The advantage to their solution was that they wouldn’t need to worry about the tides, but the Navy doubted it would work.
So instead they summoned the Milwaukee, a large cruiser much bigger and heavier than the submarine, to pull it free. For two days the Milwaukee pulled on the submarine, but the ship wasn’t designed for towing, and the crew wasn’t trained in salvage. Plus, the current was strong. And then everything went wrong, and the Milwaukee herself ended up stranded sideways on the beach near the sub it was sent to save.
Today, more than 100 years later, you can still see fragments of the Milwaukee at low tide.
I know I’m not a ship and Owen’s not a beached submarine, but in an effort to create consequences for what I saw as Owen’s negative attitude and defiant behavior, I’d made a mess of things. I tried to punish my kid for his ADHD struggles, and that profoundly strained our relationship.
Tatiana Guerreiro Ramos
Punishment never works. Ever. Because kids with ADHD are just like, ‘okay, whatever.’
Lauren
She doesn’t really care about consequences. As someone without ADHD, you have to constantly remind yourself that that’s not how she works. It’s not that she’s not getting consequences, but by the time the next moment rolls around, she’s not even thinking about that.
Elizabeth Rynecki
When I finally figured out the consequences and threats weren’t going to work with Owen, I concluded I needed to go back to therapy. And then my therapist asked me about the possibility of letting go of everything I was trying to fix. She asked me to think about what it might be like if I stopped worrying. If he flunked a class or two. “Would it be so bad,” she asked, “if it took Owen longer than the average kid to launch into adulthood?”
Like most middle class parents in America, my assumption was that my kid’s trajectory would mirror my own. I went right to an elite academic institution out of high school, and after getting an undergraduate degree, I got a master’s degree. It seemed like a foregone conclusion that my children would do something similar. So the question wasn’t whether Owen could handle some sort of nontraditional education path, but whether or not I could accept it.
Tatiana Guerreiro Ramos
The thing that I will tell you right now moves the needle the most, is parental behavior changing. And so I will never be able to make your kid understand. Your kid is going to arrive at that understanding in due time. What you need to understand about your kid’s brain is that that runway to launching is much longer for kids with ADHD.
Elizabeth Rynecki
Letting go is hard, especially when we want so much for our kids.
Allison Landa
I don’t actually worry so much about college as my husband does. I mean, my attitude is he’ll do what he does as he does it. And my husband’s attitude is, “I’ll love him, whatever kind of doctor he is, I’ll love him.” That’s his line. And, but I worry! Of course I worry.
Elizabeth Rynecki
I worried too. I worried that my kid was running out of runway. That he’d never launch. I worried if he didn’t finish school, that he’d be a dropout. That I’d have to financially support him for the rest of his life. I worried he’d never find a partner. That he’d never have an independent life
Ship salvage engineers don’t worry the same way parents worry. For one thing, there’s no emotional component. There’s just trouble that needs to be resolved.
Alex Rynecki
When you arrive at a salvage site and you see the problem, the first question you always ask yourself is, ‘what’s going on here?’ And then you ask yourself, ‘ okay, what can we do?’
Elizabeth Rynecki
Dad always operated in terms of practical limitations. The Navy did, too. But the lumber company saw the situation about the submarine from a totally different perspective. And so the best part of the story is that the lumber company’s idea did work.
They built that track. They hoisted the submarine up onto it, winched it, and then pulled the stranded submarine 550 feet per day until they completed the task.
Alex Rynecki
It took them, I think, what, a couple of months, something like that. They put it in the Humboldt Bay and they launched it and they delivered it to the Navy.
Elizabeth Rynecki
The lumber company successfully launched the submarine into Humboldt Bay in April 1917. During a different April, 100 years later, I did my best to stop worrying that Owen was stuck. I did the impossible, or at least the impossible for me. I tried to let go. But it’s a lot easier to say that phrase than to live it. All the educational experts we talked to, spoke about parents who constantly butt up against their own frustrations.
Tatiana Guerreiro Ramos
I just told a parent yesterday, actually. She said, she asked a question, I said, ‘that’s not a reasonable expectation right now of your kid.’ And she said, ‘what?’ And her husband kind of looked at me like, you know, like ‘I’ve been saying this’, but I said, ‘it’s not a reasonable expectation of your kids. So you can keep on banging your head against that wall, but it’s not actually a reasonable expectation of your neurodivergent kid right now.’
Elizabeth Rynecki
I stopped yanking Owen the direction I wanted him to go, and instead tried to give him free range to build his own track.
Steve
I think the real key is patience. I don’t think it’s that Owen wants to stay home and play video games, because I think that would actually depress him.
Elizabeth Rynecki
The track definitely isn’t the one I imagined for him, but it was a solid one. And most importantly, it was a path that respected his mental health and helped him get to where he needed to go. An interesting thing happens when you let go of the struggle right in front of you, but don’t let go of your kid.
We began to see small changes. In the spring of his senior year of high school, Owen asked if he could stop at the local taqueria for a burrito before coming home. It was such an ordinary teenage request. But for Owen, who had been avoiding even the merest hint of any public interaction for over a year, it was a big deal. As the school year wrapped up, he told us he’d be going to the end of year party. Coming from a kid who had only felt comfortable alone in his room, it was an exciting development. Owen was beginning to learn to navigate the world on his own terms.
Owen
Right now I’m sort of in the awkward place of I’m living with my parents, but I’m trying to spread my own wings. I’m in community college right now. It’s – it’s mixed. I am running into a few issues with some teachers and standards, but when is that not going to happen? Some teachers want things done a specific way. I don’t mesh well with that, but it happens. So while I’d like to spread my wings, enjoy the world and get the hell out of California, I don’t think I’m ready for that yet.
Steve
I think he doesn’t know what he wants to do. And is he unique as a 20 year old who doesn’t know what he wants to do? No!
Paula
My daughter, I let her journey be her journey, kind of helping her launch, but not be so involved that I micromanage as she tells me I do.
Elizabeth Rynecki
The basic tenet of ship salvage is to pull a ship in the reverse direction of how it beached itself, but the lumber company saw something the Navy didn’t, and I think that’s the secret sauce to navigating ADHD: finding creative solutions.
Owen and I are more alike than I sometimes care to admit, and sometimes that means we clash more than either of us would like. Just because your kid doesn’t take the route you take, doesn’t mean there isn’t merit in launching from a totally different beachhead. I’m so over that idea of pulling Owen back into the ocean. But I will always be a loving and protective mom, which is why I continue to keep a keen eye on getting him up and over the sand dune.
Please join us for our next episode, where my father slices a great big ship in half and I learned to let go.
I shouldn’t have to say this, but just in case you didn’t know, I’m not a doctor nor a therapist. If you have questions about ADHD, please consult a professional. I really hope I haven’t made any errors in my description of Milwaukee and the H3. If I have, my apologies.
Thank you to Access Humboldt, which allowed us to use the recording of an interview with John Humboldt Gates, the author of Before the Dolphins Guild, a great book documenting the H3 story.
This is Elizabeth Rynecki. Thank you for listening to That Sinking Feeling. An especially big thank you to all the people who took the time to share their stories with us, and whose voices you’ll hear throughout this series.
Owen
I’m Owen. I’m the son of Elizabeth Rynecki.
Alex Rynecki
My name is Alex Rynecki.
Steve
I’m Steve, I’m Owen’s father and Elizabeth’s husband.
Annalivia
I’m Annalivia.
Ann Rivello
My name is Ann Rivello. I am a therapist and mom.
Noah
My name’s Noah. And my daughter has ADHD.
Anonymous Mom
I’m a mom in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have two sons with ADHD.
Allison Landa
My name is Allison Landa.
Katherine Ellison
I’m Katherine Ellison. I’m a journalist and the author of Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention.
Paula
So I’m Paula from the East Bay.
Lauren
My name is Lauren.
Rachel Blatt
My name is Rachel Blatt. I have two boys. They both have ADHD. And I also have ADHD.
Corey
My name is Corey. I hope I am some form of new A.D.D..
James
My name is James. I’m a medical doctor and a psychiatrist.
Anonymous Dad
I am a parent and a musician, and I have a wife with ADHD and a six year old with ADHD.
Tatiana Guerreiro Ramos
My name is Tatiana Guerreiro Ramos, and I’m the co-director of Classroom Matters, and I have ADHD.
Linda Lawton
My name is Linda Lawton, and I’m an educational therapist.
Shannon Watts
I’m Shannon Watts. I have ADHD, and I’m the founder of Moms Demand Action.
Tony Kaplan
That Sinking Feeling is produced by me –Tony Kaplan – Elizabeth Rynecki, and Jacob Bloomfield Misrach. Audio engineering provided by IMRSV Sound.