Noticing Patterns

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I used to see patterns in clouds all the time. The fluffy white ones looked a lot like cats.

I remember being ill as a child and sitting by the toilet waiting to throw up and I would stare at the floor for what seemed like hours observing how the rectangles interacted with each other. Also, during the winter, I could see tree branches through my skylight in my room and some of them seemed to form anarchist symbols and letters. I would lay awake staring at that for an hour after I woke up before getting out of bed.

Also, when I slept over my best friend's house growing up, I would stare at the patterns in her ceiling and wallpaper early in the morning if I woke up before her (which I usually did. I have that issue when I sleep over someone else's house, I wake up way too early).

I still do these things absently.

I can totally relate to that. When I'm bored I have always looked for geometric shapes in groups of objects, people, etc. I think that is at least one of the reasons I like big cities at night--all the lights in the buildings are arranged in huge geometric grids. Geometry is still an interesting subject for me.



I do this quite a bit too, and I did it even more when I was younger. In my family's old house, where I lived when I was in elementary school, my bedroom ceiling was all wood and had a very pronounced grain in it. While laying in bed after waking up in the morning, I would try to mentally connect the knots in the wood with a network of lines having the minimum total length, or try to find several knots that were all on one straight line, etc.

In my high school, the doors into some of the English and history classrooms were wooden with panes of glass in them, and sandwiched between the two panes of glass in each door was a piece of wire mesh. This mesh had a hexagonal grid pattern, like chicken wire, and while some of the sides of the hexagons were a single piece of wire, others consisted of two pieces of wire twirled around each other, making them thicker. The hexagonal pattern and the fact that the thick and thin segments alternated along the grid reminded me of the bonding of carbon atoms in a sheet of graphite (I am a chemistry student, and was already into it at that time).

As of now I am interested in organic chemistry, which often comes down to recognizing particular patterns of atoms (called "functional groups") in a large molecule. My ability to mentally rotate complex objects also contributes to my understanding of this subject, as I can identify the patterns no matter how they are arranged in space. Also, one of the things I want to do in graduate school is work on how cells can be induced to form patterns through chemical communication between them. I am often at odds with professors since they tend to only use mathematical and computer models whereas I like to mentally see what's going on inside the cells.

All the bathroom tiles at UW are placed randomly, there is no pattern. Yet, when I'm in the stall I still look for them.

Yes I notice patterns a lot. I see a lot of faces in things as well. If I go into a public toilet, for example, and I see a couple of screws next to each other and a bit of bendy pipe below that, i will see a smiley face, or perhaps a face with a puzzled expression. I remember, when I was working in a warehouse doing some industrial temping for a few days once, that I would always go in the same toilet cubicle because my 'friend' was there (the funny little face made of screws and pipes)

My mom said that I could recognize a record from it's pattern.

what's a record (sorry i'm not english, is it a Long Player?)

Yes, a long-playing record.

Yeah, I do this. I never thought much of it until I was diagnosed with AS. Now I find them even more interesting.

I remember as a teenager I would compulsively split every word I read or heard into sections to make it symmetrical. Especially the long ones. It made me even better at spelling than I already was. Number plates as well, I look at them and reorganize the letters and numbers so that there will be a better structure. Visually or conceptually.

I like moss and branches and natural patterns but I also like design patterns. Sometimes landscape architecture is very well done, very properly put together. And buildings grouped together, when it's done right it's satisfying to look at.

Yes, I've done this my whole life. As a kid I could spend what seemed like hours lying in my bed finding things in the ceiling. My husband says I'm always finding patterns in things, but I guess I do it so much I'm not really aware of it and don't realize others aren't noticing the same things.

I do this too. I go so far as to count the squares in a lot to make sure that I can place things in such a way that everything will remain exactly symmetrical.

Both symmetry and repetition have always appealed to me. Short song loops or listening to the same song over and over again can be soothing, particularly when I have migranes or my ears are bothering me. Even listening to an entire CD over again works. Somehow regardless of if I'm paying all that much attention or not, I can somehow recognize when the CD has started over.

I also have a tendency to use the same words a lot. It's something I have to take a conscious effort not to do when writing, especially when trying to do college papers.