Do other people say you notice more detail than others?

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I see details that nobody else sees and also have a long term memory that just won't stop. Some people have said that I have a photographic memory, but personally I do not believe this. I continually amaze my sister by recalling minute details from our childhood that she has long forgotten. I even remember the pain involved when my parents rinsed off my healing umbilical cord just after birth... or maybe it was my circumcision wound. That distinction is one that I do NOT remember... shame on me.

I point out patterns in things often. My friends say things like "i would never have thought that" or "i would never have seen that"

A few hours ago my girlfriend and I went to Barnes and Noble. While browsing, I noticed the positions of the books.

Now, I can still remember the exact order of books I was interested in on which shelves.

I cannot for the life of me remember the route we took to get to the store, the faces of any other customers, how much the books cost whose prices I looked at, or how much the coffee I got cost.

We also went to a pet store (it's a quirk we share). I can recall each dog and cat I played with nearly perfectly. Which shelves had which types of cat toys and cat foods. But I have no idea where the store is, whether the person who owned the husky was a male or female, etc.

We then went to a gourmet grocery store. I can remember exactly how much per pound the Jamaican Blue Mountain is ($49.99), the prices of the other types of coffee, the location and brand of each coffee maker, and the exact kinds of curry sauces in which aisle. I do not remember its location, whether we talked to anyone, or details about the bakery supplies.

Yes, I can notice and remember those things which interest me, to a rather high degree. But I have little control over what I will find interesting, and no control over whether the details I archived would be at all useful to somebody else. This makes my memory a kind of crapshoot, in which I and anyone else will just have to hope I was in eidetic mode rather than passive mode.

I used to believe I had good memory for all those little things, then I realized my friends were using me instead of search engines for certain things. Once someone you know who's sitting at a computer tells you "Well yeah, I could, but it's faster to ask you so I don't have to tab" it's no longer a belief. To this day I insist that I'm not a walking version of google damn it, and they insist that yes, I am.