Why can’t I have a disorder called HAPPY?

Each year about October, the light starts to fade in Montana and darkness drifts into our mornings and evenings like an unwelcome snake. Frankly, it makes me a little crazy to go to work and come home in the dark. By the time Christmas rolls around I’m eating enough sugar to make me susceptible to adult-onset diabetes and am crying at Hallmark commercials.  This syndrome unfortunately has a name and it’s called SAD — which stands for Seasonal Affective Disorder. It makes you depressed for about six months out of the year.

Now,I’m not sure whether the acronym SAD happened by accident, or was a deliberate play on words by some witty psychiatrist, but it’s not helpful. If you had a learning disability, would you want to have to tell your teacher, “I’m sorry Mrs. Smith, but I have STUPID”? Or if you were impotent would you want your doctor to prescribe Viagra for FLACCID? No, I don’t think so. It’s bad enough to be depressed, but to have to tell everyone, “I’ve got SAD,” is both humiliating and bad grammar.