Conversations where it's like you're not there

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You have to be careful though. Some people can accurately listen and do other things too. It's a skill that happens to come in the bundle with my ADHD. It used to piss off some of my instructors/teachers. I'd be sitting in class and reading [something to do with some other subject or a magazine] while everyone else was busy scribbling notes and staring intently at the chalkboard. But I was retaining what was said, usually better than anyone else in the room. I remember one particular time in an analog computer course (or something like that) I guess it had been wearing raw on the instructor that I was very obviously reading some other book. Middle of the class he breaks out of his lecturing to ask me a question about what he had been covering. I was surprised because he didn't normally ask students questions like this, so I asked him to repeat the question to make sure I had heard it correctly. Then I immediately did the calculation, explained the process, and gave him the answer. The look of surprise on his face was priceless. He never hassled me again, and was a lot friendlier too ... because I managed to bite my tongue and not blurt out "If you want me to pay more attention to you all you have to do is pick up the pace".

P.S. Later in the cafeteria some of my classmates said they were glad he hadn't asked them the question because they wouldn't have been able to answer it. It wasn't a softball question that he tossed at me.

I was that way in highschool, but not anymore. Now, I can, in the middle of a conversation, tell you what other people in the restaurant are talking about. It's really embarrassing when my sister is telling me how aweful her day was at work expecting me to feel pity, and I start laughing hysterically because someone three tables down said something funny like, "All you want me for is sex" or something. I try hard to not listen to other people's conversations, but I can't help it. Most of the time, I don't even realize i'm doing it. I also pay attention to everything around me like birds, butterflies, a run in a woman's pantyhose, ugly shoes, the bartender is left handed, that person over there talks with her hands a lot, that guy isn't really drinking his drink is he an undercover cop, etc.

The funny one was one day in Psyc class, I was taking all these notes from the projector adding in notes from what the teacher said. Mind you, she'd put about 10 minutes worth of note writing on one sheet and go through it in 2-3 minutes, so I'd be writing like a fiend shortening things like regul8 and b4. One day I was reviewing for a test, my notes, and I was reading... Blah Blah blah, and the teacher said this but the guy behind me disagrees because.... I had written notes from what the guy behind me said to the guy next to him about the subject without even knowing it.

I have the "accidental" eavesdropping sometimes too. But multiple speech conversations tend to mess me up. Those I can't multitask very well. I've heard of people that can track 5 or 6 simultaneous conversations, at say a party though. How many tables can you track at once?

One conversation plus multiple visual or tactile tasks is fine though, even listening to background music or sounds. I suspect that spoken word decoding is not "running native" for me so I've got lag switching between the conversations which can cause problems if the words collide. Though it also isn't something that I've worked on so maybe I just need to put the effort into practicing and developing it. I can go fairly deep in mental contemplation of some unrelated topic and keep my situational awareness but if it's really consuming I have to be careful not to slip into "zoning out" and hyper-focusing on that.

I don't know. I think I drop in and out maybe, or maybe I'm subconsciously listening until something attracts my conscious attention. My guess is about 3 or 4 maybe. I really don't know. I think sometimes I do it out of boredom. Some NT conversations...zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Maybe I'm just on the radar for something more interesting? Who knows.

Also, I will often interrupt people (including myself) when one of my favorite songs comes on the background music, or a song I hate enough to make it known. Sometimes, I'll be talking and then go, "is that Mozart?" What really gets people (and only three or four songs are worthy of this) is when I ask everyone to SHHH so I can hear my song. When they don't listen to me, I answer every question with something about the song, like I just love how Kanye uses a marching band in the background...do you hear it?....

aaargh! I go berserk when someone does that to me while I'm sharing something vulnerable from the heart!

Ephemerella it just sounds to me like you're a lot more interesting than your friends!

Yes this has happened to me in the past. At that point I have just left them all to it (without dramatically storming out) and just remembered that these sorts of people are not worth conversing with again. But then having said that, members of my own family do this to me routinely and then say 'oh sorry Fi what were you saying?' Sometimes I tell them again, other times I just tell them that if they thought that what I was saying was important enough, then they would not have interrupted me. This is why I don't often visit some particular family members as they do this to me all the damn time.

Hello Morgana, I too am given status via my achievements / position workwise. Otherwise, experience warns me to avoid any social / mixing situations if not known for my talents. Though being older has some benefits. i think my problem (selfdiag aspi) is that seldom if ever am I around anyone with a mind like mine, ie wide ranging, read lots and retained it etc.