Profound yet useless savant skills, anyone?

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Does anyone have a profound savant skill that is achingly useless?
I do
It's depressing when I see that other people with Asperger's can calculate equations and prime numbers and roots and so on almost instantaneously in their mind. I can barely figure out the tax on my books without pulling out a calculator..
I have two abilities that usually get me in trouble.
The first is..what some describe as speed reading. It doesn't feel fast to me, but my teachers insist that I haven't actually read core literature novels and short stories even though I read them over 4 times in the time it takes them to get to the second chapter with the whole class.
The second, and the most cumbersome is that I can see typos and mistakes instantly. I glance at pages of books momentarily and I see all of the grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors standing out, almost like they are in a bolded font.
I've discovered that while some people shamelessly use me for it and then ditch me, others become genuinely upset with me because I find 8 or 9 subtle errors immediately upon looking at their essays (for just a few seconds) ..even if they spent an hour poring over it searching for mistakes and asked multiple peers to review them.
Today Dad was filling out a job application, and when he left it alone for a moment I fixed his spelling in three places before he returned. When I did that before, he was upset with me and told me to stop being a smart*ss. I couldn't have told him that he's the opposite of that without some really nasty repercussions.
Anyway.
Does anyone else have a useless or even harmful unusual ability?

Those two skills are not useless. They are the exact two skills needed to become a professional manuscript proofreader. If you have any interest in having such a job, you would be ideal.

I don't know exactly how one gets into that profession. But the first thing I thought when I read your post was "this person should be paid to proofread manuscripts before publishing". There must be some way you can get into that field.

I am a speed reader, but I wouldn't call it fast enough to be a savant. It takes me about 4 hours or so to read an average sized novel. Plus I can paint sort of photo realism style; a.k.a. I can have a photo sitting next to me and a blank canvas, and primary colours only, and I can colour mix and paint that photo onto the canvas so that the canvas looks like a photo. If that makes any sense. The first time I spontaneously did it my teacher was so shocked and delighted she wanted to put my painting on the front page of the school journal. I wouldn't say it's savant in that other people would be incapable of doing it, more it's just that I did it instantly without any training. My other ability is my memory for music, a.k.a. I used to be able to sing the entire Les Miserables 3 hour soundtrack by heart when I was 12 (including all the breaks, instrumentation, etc) and these days I have a favourites list of over 600 songs and could probably sing 99% of that by heart (again including instrumentation). Sometimes I describe it like having an internal ipod or mp3 player; I think of a certain song I want to listen to, then "remember it" (a.k.a. press play) and I can hear that song crystal clear with all parts intact, same as if I was hearing it out loud. Again, I'm not sure if this is a savant ability as I'm not sure how many other people can do this, I'm guessing a lot of other people probably can do this also, I don't think it would be super rare.

''The second, and the most cumbersome is that I can see typos and mistakes instantly. I glance at pages of books momentarily and I see all of the grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors standing out, almost like they are in a bolded font.''

This one is definetely recognizable for me, but than with Dutch, my native language. My skills are useless; I'm really good at logics, and I have a great memory that astonished my teachers and classmates in the past. I notice logical mistakes really quickly. I can really relate to what you wrote, it was my own conclusion ages ago, that I have some great abillities that are just utterly useless in practice. That made me feel even sad in a way.

I'm pretty good at that kind of thing too, at least as far as spelling errors and typos. I agree it is as if the mistake just pops out at you. I wonder if it's an ability to see a disruption in a pattern in the sense that as you are reading you can often predict what words will follow logically and when something is amiss, you notice. For instance, if you are reading " The woman was walking along the shode" you can instantly tell it should have been shore. book_noodles how is your comprehension? I read very very fast but I retain little unfortunately. I try to slow down and my mind starts to wander. I had a roommate years ago that worked as a proofreader. Here's a pay scale site re: proofreading.
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job ... ourly_Rate

Those skills are actually handy for all sorts of things. The better you read, the faster you can acquire information, which is always a valuable skill. Last time I was clocked (loOoOOooOong time ago) if memory serves, I could read at 800wpm with 88% comprehension (which is fast, but not page-flipping speed, which I consider scanning), but I prefer to read at a somewhat more relaxed pace, comparatively speaking, and soak up the visual images.

@Aimless: I think you're probably right about the brain attempting to anticipate the words before the eye actually scans them, 'cause it feels like a car hitting a pothole to me when I hit a typo or misspelled word. SMACK! Krike, fix that damned thing! I must confess , while I have always tried to avoid judging others for their lack of skills in the spelling department, now that SpellCheck automatically underlines it for you and will fix it a the click of a mouse, there's simply no excuse.

I don't know how many Aspergians are able to do savant type math in their heads, I understand a certain knack with math is fairly common (though I didn't get that gene), but genuine savant abilities are pretty rare in anyone, AS or otherwise.

Ooh, ooh, I have one! I have the incredible ability to alienate any group of people simply by spending time with them! Some would call this my personality, but I know it for the amazing savant talent that it is.

@book_noodles I'm with everyone else on this thread who thinks speed reading and fantastic typo recognition are anything but useless.

I rarely make a mistake with spelling and can easily filter out those kinds of errors, quick with simple math as well without needing to resort to a calculator

I agree with that, too. Maybe you should look into this.

I'm interested in looking into professional manuscript editing now..
The responses surprised me. I'm used to complaints that I am a "grammar nazi.."
Which is a pretty rude comparison, in my eyes.
Regardless, I'm glad to see that people see some value in my skills or even that some people see them as such
I agree with those who mentioned that it seems like its caused by a hypersensitivity to disturbances in a pattern. That is a logical explanation...
Thank you for your thoughts...I may try to employ my abilities in ways that are accepted by society and not reviled by the people I'm trying to help
As always, I'm respectfully impressed by those of you with calculator brains my hats off to you. NOT a Nazi hat. God people are weird

I am good at memorization. I have memorized my social security number, my drivers license number, mine, my mom's, and the campers license plate numbers, my library card number, and the cell phone numbers for everyone in my family. I am also really good at noticing patterns.

I noticed most music has a pattern of 4/4 time. I noticed that all the north-south streets in my county are numbered, and the east-west streets are named after presidents. The addresses on the east-west streets correspond with the numbered north-south streets.

I feel I have very few strong skills but I do have one pretty useless savant skill; it is the ability to remember lots of stuff from funny yet offensive TV shows(like Family Guy) & I also remember lots of comedy music type stuff. This can get me into trouble because I sometimes talk about it in situations where it is NOT appropriate. The skill to remember all the comedy music is probably worse because very few people usually head that stuff & I can carry on long one sided discussions about it. When people are talking about a certain song; I start talking about the nasty parody of it that they never heard. It's a good thing I keep to myself offline for the most part because I'd probably get my butt kicked

Any examples?

When I think of "comedy music," I tend to think of stuff like THE LONELY ISLAND from Saturday Night Live.

My favorites are "Punch You In The Jeans," "Lazy Sunday," "Like A Boss" and "Space Olympics."

I'll give some. When I hear the Barenaked Ladies song "One Week" I start thinking about Weird Al Yankovic's version "Jerry Springer". I did not want to give an example here that was to nasty. I also sometimes hear a song & suddenly start creating some parody lyrics in my head. I mite could be a parody song writer except I can only come up with the general idea & a couple verses instead of the whole song.

With some time, you could probably come up with a whole song.

I'm going to have to look this up. Thanks!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming

Mathematics in programming is not generally required. If you are doing 3D graphics or some kind of sciense, then it is required. If you just are going to fetch/store data in a database that is hooked to a Web GUI, all you need is logical thinking and attention to detail.