In the past two years, I have sold about 260 cars, and also have an additional 50 clients I talk to regularly that have not yet purchased a car from me. My work has caller ID and when someone calls in, I recognize their number from memory and know exactly who it is prior to picking up the phone. I have always been able to do this.
Yet, if I tried to call them I would not be able to recite their number from memory.
This one is a little weird. Back when I worked on cars, I worked at dealerships. I spent all day looking and fixing the same cars over and over. The only seeming difference was the color of the paint.
Anyway a customer would often come into the shop to ask about some work I had recommended during their prior visit. now that prior visit might have been month or more ago. Looking at the customer I could not recall their name or what their car needed. But I would suggest that we walk out to their car. I would open the hood, and as soon as I saw the engine I knew exactly what work I had done to the car the last time and what I had recommended.
I have no clue as to how this memory trigger works, as Volvo engine rooms are all pretty much exactly the same.
There has got to be a research grant in there somewhere.
I learned my ex-wife’s birthday after I’d known her 3 years. Could never recall if it was the 30th or the 31st. Then it hit me. If I was ever wrong that meant I had been late, so it must be the 30th. Boy I felt smart after that.
When people walk into the pharmacy I can regularly tell you their name, medications, any insurance problems with the claim for about 3 weeks prior. In fact if you tell me the name of a medication, I can tell you how many I filled that day and for whom, including if they went through insurance and how much it costs.
I was in California working for 4 months, and I still remembered by name most of the regular customers who came in the door when I came back. Funny thing is, only a few of them remembered me 
In fact, while I was in CA I remember I was helping out at one store and took a prescription from one guy, probably talked to him for 2 minutes. A week and a half later, I picked him out of line by name, and asked him for his insurance card because there had been an issue with it. He didn’t believe that I had the right person, so I promptly told him his name, date of birth, the name and strength and dosage of his medication, when he dropped it off, when he told me he was going to return (he was 2 days late) and what his insurance was. And what they had told me on the phone 10 days earlier. Without accessing any information from the computer.
I can also spout off NDC codes for about the top 20 meds we dispense every day. And tell you which ones of those are on backorder.
I wish that space could be used for good instead of work. Then I could remember my schedule without needing a damn PDA to run my life for me.
-foxy
We had a three-school Physical Therapy educational lecture series. One lecturer had a droning voice, and was giving a dull lecture that a powerful soporific effect. After 45 minutes, I was fast asleep. The lecturer then suddenly and dramatically raised his voice, rhetorically asking something obscure about an extensor muscle. I am told I sat bolt upright, called out “Anconeus!”, then sat blinking vaguely when the lecturer congratulated my school for an outstanding anatomy program. I will probably never know what the question was. My brain can also answer statistics questions better from a sound sleep.
When we play Trivial Pursuit, it usually winds up as me vs. the entire family. I win probably 90% of the time.
Clothahump, we have a similar problem in my family. My mother is our most prized player. If she has a single glass of wine, she is un-stumpable for an hour. Then she falls asleep. The key is to get the glass of wine at a strategic time. It is believed I inherited my odd memory from her.
A bit strange but not, I guess unusual. Talking to the family a week or so ago. discussing a car Mum biught in the 1960’s. Not only could I recite it’s number plate, and the nickname we gave it but also the price she paid for it and the repayments. Why that stayed with me I hvae no idea.
It was a Morris Oxford BTW,
Me too. I hate the game for this reason (and for the stupid way in which it is meant to be concluded, which always ends up as a 30-minute conspiracy against me). The only pleasure I get from it is when I don’t know the answer, but am able to use deduction and reasoning to work it out.
Strange thing is, I have a terrible memory when I don’t engage. If I’m interested in something I retain it with extreme clarity, but usually I go through life not knowing what day it is, or what I said in a business meeting the day before. An example of this is that it takes me weeks to learn someone’s name - unless that someone is an attractive woman, in which case I will retain their name until I die. I’m so shallow.
Conversely, one day when I was about seven and bored, my grandfather suggested I learn The Jabberwocky, which I still retain, and I also learned pi to 30 decimal places (not quite 1,100), which I also still retain. I also know pretty much the entire script of Withnail & I, and the lyrics and guitar chords to about 100 songs. Not prodigious or amazing really.
Pi, to a thousand decimal places.
The Loaded Dog, have you heard of David Rosdeitcher, the Zip code guy? He’s freaking amazing. He knows every zip code in the US, will usually name a famous restaurant from that zip code, and makes up a really entertaining story with volunteers from his street audience. I was watching his street performance once and threw out my zip code “200032” and without skipping a beat he replied “Shanghai China”. Gobsmacked I was and he got $10 in the hat at the end of his performance. Later in the act, he did a foreign zip code section and got it right with people from a lot of different countries and then would say something in that language.
Here’s his website David Rosdeitcher has absolute recall of all 48,000 zip codes in the United States and many foreign countries. And for every place in the USA he can recommend the best restaurants in town.
Linky no work.
One day I was bored in school and memorized the complete square roots for the numbers 1-15.
I used to work at Compusa and I had processed a person’s credit application and filed it. A little over a week later another employee started to ask me about a credit application and I immediately told her the name before she even finished the question. My memory’s response was so fast but also I knew which application she was talking about instantly which was kind of weird.
Lists and numbers. During one tour in the military I was temporarily in charge of all the tool kits and construction supplies. Within three months, I could tell you what was in each kit and how many were supposed to be there. At work, if asked to recall which project number corresponds to which project, I’m at a loss unless I can put it all in a spreadsheet beforehand. Then it just pops into my head. I’m also somewhat facile with languages.
China Guy, thanks! I’d never heard of that guy before. Here’s a working link, too:
http://www.zipcodeman.com We had a few guys like that where I work. Maybe not in Zip Code Man’s league, but still pretty impressive.
don’t ask, you’ll be sad to learn that Australia Post has now “dumbed down” the job to the point where new recruits are no longer geographically trained at all. They just sort the postcode breaks, and “training” consists of just being sent onto the floor on their first day, and picking up an article, then spending five minutes looking at the various pigeon holes to find the postcode. On the other hand, I’ve timed myself at just under an article a second, averaged over ten minutes (though admittedly slower day-to-day). I spoke to a manager about this, and suggested that the policy of skimping on training would come back to bite Australia Post on the arse. His reply: “It already has.” The older, geographically trained officers are now in hot demand for any non-mechanised work (such as Express Post), and the supervisors get stressed out because often there aren’t enough of us to go around.
The irony, as you might recall, is that we were trained NOT to use postcodes, except as a last resort, due to the fact that often up to 10% of mail is incorrectly coded anyway. We were trained on the delivery office, so ask a new recruit about, say, Mudgee, and he’ll say “2850”, but to me, it’ll always be “Bathurst”. Of course, we learned the postcodes anyway by osmosis. But when we get overseas mail, which is either badly coded or not coded at all, the new guys are completely stuffed.
I know codes of our advertisers at work and I can tell you if they are currently on air. Considering we have thousands of advertisers, both past and present, I find my little quirk comes in quite handy for our sales department.
I can:
List all the US presidents in order from 1-43. (I can also list them in order from 43-1).
Name every Oscar-winning piture from 1928 to the present.
Sing the entire score to “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”. (Our mixed chorus performed it when I was in 8th grade.) In fact, I used to do this as a mowed the lawn as a kid to pass the time.
When I was around 16, my 10-year-old cousin showed me a group picture of his Little League team. There were about 25 kids in the picture. Being silly, he told me all of their names. Afterwards, he playfully asked me to say all of their names, picking faces randomly.
I got each one correct.
Seems small compared to the other feats listed here, but I will never forget it.
Not to the level of the others who memorized Pi to 1000 decimals, but I have memorized Pi to 100 decimals.
I still have “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” memorized… in Spanish… All three verses. I learned it my junior year in High School and have had it ever since in my head.
I can recite the intro to Starfox 64 
/nerdy and non-impressive trait