Title says it all. Brag about large amounts of data you have memorized, or a minute detail you were able to recall after many years of not thinking about it all.
My start:
Back in the 70s, I had a paper route from the time I was 10 'till I was 16.
After a couple of years, I could tell you the last name and address of each of my 150 or so customers. When my parents would take me on vacation I would literally write out the entire list of addresses for the fill-in paper boy from memory.
I could tell you if they had a dog, and if so what breed, gender, and it’s name. If they called saying they didn’t get a paper, I could tell them in what part of thier yard it had landed in.
I could also tell you the address, and discribe every single house on my route, customer or not (with people moving, and subscribing, unsubscribing, many were former customers). I could tell you which streets had the oddball fill-in addresses: the basic scheme in this area was that addresses incrimented by 10, so those ending in 0 were on one side, and those ending in 1 were on the other. But for longer than normal blocks there was sometimes a 5 or a 4 thrown into the mix.
After the paper route, I had a couple of retail jobs, first in a pharmacy, and later at Montgomery Ward. Sometimes former paper customers would come in, and I would always be able to recall thier address.
At my first “real world” job, I memorized the city’s zoning code and map. Give me an address, and I coud tell you the zoning district, permitted uses, setback requirements, and other rules that would apply to the property.
I have an uncle that everyone, including me, thinks is very strange. He is brilliant but very anti-social and has some odd inter-personal skills. I am on record as being the only kid that he ever liked. When I was 12, I rode with him for a 3 hour ride and I asked him about what he did. He gave me a very long-winded explanation that consumed most of the ride.
Fast forward 20 years. I am 32 years old and I live across the country and I only see my family at all once a year or so. I haven’t seen my uncle at all in 7 years. It is Christmas and the whole family is sitting around talking. I actually work in a similar position as my uncle so I ask him about it. He replies, “Well, the least time we were talking about this…”. I replied, “I was only twelve then but I wanted to ask you what you meant when you said…”.
We just picked up that same conversation like no time had passed whatsoever. The rest of the family just watched in amazement and we weren’t kidding around.
My short-term memory is average at best but I have near total recall for any reading or conversations I engage in if I am at all interested in them.
I learned the list memory trick and can do a list of 20 things and tell you what number it is on the list. It’s a fun little parlor trick but I can’t say I’ve used it for much in the real world.
I’m a postal worker. I know the postcode of every little hick village with three men and a brown dog in the entire country. I also know the delivery office it’s assigned to. I also know vast numbers of foreign places (small, little known ones), and can sort to overseas where the country isn’t included in the address (a common thing, for some reason). I have a vast store of postal truck and aircraft despatch times in my head.
Of course the moment I walk out the door of that place each night, the information is suddenly rendered completely esoteric and useless.
When I was 22 I was passing through Lewisburg PA and I stopped at a little burger joint. When I went home I told my dad that it was weird, but I was pretty darn sure I had been there before. He told me that I had - when I was 3. We used to stop there when we were going to my grandma’s when I was just a wee lad.
I can frequently remember all the words to songs all I ever learned as a child. They are probably taking up the memory space I could be using to remember my cell phone number. Need to know all the words to the Super Chicken theme song? The F Troop theme song? In The Year 2525? The contents of the whole damn Baptist Hymnal? Agh! Make it stop!
I have such a memory. I’m not saying you suffer from it, but I have difficulties remembering numbers, and whether it was to the right or the left, but don’t tell me I said this or that back in the '80, because I will remember the entire dialogue. Also stuff I read which interested me once; still an expert on greek mythology, can tell you long stories from The Golden Bough, and so forth, though haven’t read any for ten years or more. But I need to check my card if you ask for my cell phone number.
I’ve got a great memory for the written word. At the Christian highschool I attended, we were required to memorize portions of the New Testament. I still know a large chunk of it by heart. Comes in really handy when debating Creationists who want to snidely say, “Have you ever even READ the Bible?”
I’m pretty good with numbers. I was secretary for a community council once, and memorized everyone’s address and phone number – about 40 people.
At the last place I worked, 2200 employees, 12 years there, I probably knew at least half of the employee ID numbers, from making their ID cards, filing, entering data. Bad with names though.
Me too! Except mine are advertising jingles from the past 35 years. If someone asks me for my home phone, I say “555-39…uh…mmm…Its the first Chevy of the 80’s, the first Chevy of its kiiiiiiiiind, this should be the car you have in mind, Chevy Citaaaaaaation.” Some people find it endearing.
Many years ago I was a postal worker and I am sure that TheLoadedDog wins. You had to pass 2 tests to get the top rate of pay and it meant knowing basically **where ** every place in Australia is. If it is a small place you have to know to which bigger place it is related. I can still vaguely remember some of the rhymes I made up to remember sort sequences.
There is something really Zen about hand sorting mail while you chat with the people around you as your brain effortlessly sorts the mail.
I used to work for an office supply company, and part of that was filling toner orders for walk-in customers. Toner/contract prices were tied to individual serial numbers, but we were very old school and just filled out invoices manually on NCR triplicate forms. The computer computer with all the info on it was on a desk behind the counter.
For most of my regular customers that came in to buy stuff cold, (without phoning an order in ahead of time) I never had to look anything up.
I’d recognize their face, and just start filling out the invoice: “Mahoney’s Bar, 1025 Robson St (604) 662-3676 – Model: L770 – Serial number: C0207883…”
I remember one guy said “You remember my machine’s serial number? I couldn’t even tell you what brand it is.”
These days I have scores of product codes for transitory fashions memorized.
A girl might walk buy wearing a sexy little tank top, and I’ll think “Hey, nice! A 2CF4 316758-227! You can tell she doesn’t wear it much, though.” (Not as hard as it seems, since the product codes have lots of imbedded info about time, material, colour, style, etc.)
While studying for my comprehensive exams, I noticed that I’d memorized the birth dates and death dates of every author in my periods, so during I would throw in stuff like, “Edgar Allan Poe, who was born in 1809 and who died in 1849,” if it was even remotely relevant to the question being asked.
Probably hurt me as much as it helped me, I guess–anyway, my most impressive feat (to me) was coincidental. I happened to memorize Longfellow’s (?) poem about the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, just for fun, about a week before my second grade teacher announced in class, “I’d llike to read you a long poem called ‘The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,’ children. Has anyone heard of it?”
I raised my hand, stood up, and promptly recited the whole thing.
I KNOW that did me more harm than good. For the rest of grade school, pretty much everyone in my class hated me. Of course, my memorization feat may not have been the only reason.
I took French from 8th to 10th grade. I’m 41 now and don’t remember a lick of it, except a crazy french drinking song about knights at a round table drinking wine. It is a very simple song, but I still can remember it, and even sing it. Maybe the best way to teach language is with song?
