unusual or eccentric skills or interests

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Maybe because of having to adapt so well in a "NT" world (or dying brain cells perhaps), those eccentric skills that I once had as a kid and young adult basically disappeared overtime. For instance when I was around 10, I was able to tell you the day of the week that a particular date fell on in any given year. Like if someone were to ask me for fun "what day of the week would August 27, 2008 fall on?" I would automatically say "Wednesday". I even did my 5th grade speech on calendars since that was obviously one of my few interests at that time. After I had completed my speech I gave my classmates the opportunity to test me by asking me what day of the week any date would fall on.. I passed every test! They were amazed to say the least.. I still remember this one boy yelling out "holy how can she do that?" My parents even to this day ask me how in the heck I was able to do that.. and they even asked me if I had invented some odd formula to figure that out. I guess I did. And to be honest, I even forgot how I had developed such a unique skill... so I can't really answer them that question. I couldn't even answer that question back then... and when I was 19 I developed a strong interest in area codes and telephone exchanges. If I saw a phone number somewhere, I would automatically know where the location of that number would be based on the telephone exchange. I also used to be excellent at remembering phone numbers... which really was a good thing.. too bad I suck at that now. Any unusual skills or interests you would like to share?

I used to have pi memorized way out, but now i've forgotten a lot of it.

I did the dinosaur thing as a youngin' 99% forgotten now

i still have a tendency to memorize IP addresses, not as much anymore. my old ISP's dns servers were 205.217.6.2 and 205.217.6.3

someone memntions a common network service and most of them I can tell you the standard tcp/ip or udp ports they run over. or could last i tried anyway

i know the Chassis codes for most bmws since they started using the Exx naming.. and also a good chuck of toyota's and nissan's chassis and engine designations...

the approximate horsepower of way too many cars to list.

I'm sure there are even more esoteric things locked away in there somewhere... silly aspie brain is really good at storing things, not always so good at finding them later, or finds them at silly times.


I've gotten lazy with regards to some of my more recent interests, like etymology just haven't made the time to go through as absorb everything yet

Jeff

I know a lot about cats and the Olympic Games.

I have never had any special skills.

I know all breeds of dogs, types of ants, tons of medical abreviations and assorted OB/GYN, midwifery, and Phlebotomy knowledge. I can tell you anything about the band Duran Duran and I also have a vast knowledge of which are the best cloth diapers to use.....my son had an allergy to disposables...I developed an obsession.

Thanks for sharing, its funny how many of us have such extreme interests.. that we make "skills" out of.

I can remember when certain products premiered on the market. If you ask me when the first Air Jordans came out, I can tell you April 1st, 1985 for $65. I'm good with remembering retro releases. I'm also pretty good at remembering birthdates, right down to the year that a person was born.

I tend to memorize all sorts of strange things that pass through my awareness, whether I want to or not. It's especially true of technical things like computers...people are ALWAYS asking me questions on IM because they know I know all this stuff.

Numbers are even worse. Sometimes I actually avoid staring at numbers (like phone numbers on ads) because I know they'll stick in my head. I've got phone numbers to BBSs memorized that I haven't called in 20 years...and I have 60 or so digits of pi in my head that got stuck there staring at a big pi banner in math class in 7th grade.

I have good photgraphic memory for thinsg I find important. I may not remember the car model sat in but I do remember Ho Chi Mingh street in Calcutta or a weird name in another country, for which my NT friends go 000h and aaaah, "how do you do it, I can't even remeber a street name from my village".

I recall dates or years of when a music record or video was out with exact tly where I was and did in images or even what I said that day.

I am eccentric for many people for the way I dress (always been ever since I became a punk, then New waver, New romantic and fabricated my own style.

I have a huge interest and can talk hours about Indians from the Americas or tribes in SE Asia. My intersts are broad, but only recently I open up a bit to science, but when it becomes too eltitst in writing I thank for it and let it go. History of peoples, cultural anthropology.

Anything that has to do with sex has had my interst since I was 10 years old, who knows younger.

In short for most NT friends I am very well read and an extremely interesting character. Some love to entertained by me listening to my travel stories others who don't know me well and have no interests in my interests like my siblings abhorr it and find I talk too much. Music, literature, film, arts, travel, countries, aborigenal peoples, shamanism are my topics

Last edited by Loborojo on 29 Aug 2008, 6:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't really have special skills, just a somewhat superior memory for some things.
List of stuff:

I recognize neighborhood cars by their license plates.
I know country names, capitals, language names etc. (Not unusual, just for my age group/education level)
Large vocabulary and keyboard shortcuts; see above
I have a good memory for music and always have a song playing in my head. I'm working on increasing the "volume" so I can distract myself in school when I'm bored.
I still remember how to write all those weird scripts I adopted or invented (for example, modified Tengwar and Hangul or one based on the Mayan numeral system). Reading them is another issue... Oh, and my fellow classmates always want to know what language I'm writing in. "English" is not an acceptable answer.
I don't usually study for tests. Usually I already know the material from class activities and hearing the teacher speak or I learned it previously from the Internet or the library.

When it comes to certain things, I have a photographic memory and even remember the exact date when it occurred. But it would have been to me extraordinary (positive or negative). I was very good at subjects like geography and social studies.

Supposedly, Many brains store a lot of things. Aspie brains I guess cross reference and recall better. I know mine does. Still, it used to be BETTER. 8-(

I think my interests in a lot of different things helps me a lot in my job at the library. I listen to a wide variety of music, so I know what genre the various CDs belong to, from Classical to Rock and Roll.

the only skill i can think of that i lost or failed to develop was that i remember i used to be able to contort my throat into a "screech" which was high enough in volume and pitch to shatter glass; and probably ten times more irritating. Everybody more or less urged me to never do it again ever. It was a real talent because theres throat control involved with muscles that are normally involuntary for most people. Well eventually enough time passed and i tried to do it and i realized i had forgotten how. I can still play with those muscles a little bit, but theres a perfect set of balanced variables i can't find to do the same thing any more.

I still have a great falsetto tho- i can hit hi c....

lol.

Other than that offhand i developed all my disabilities by driving into them and overcoming them and overcoping them until they became strengths and this of course played into my strengths rather than shutting me down.

I guess astral projection comes to mind at number 2, but being out of body is more a psi sport than anything practical, esp with the current condition of the astral. And plus i think that kind of thing peaks at puberty for NTs and then drops off
for them there 2.

Show me almost any plant or animal from the midwest united states, I can tell you it's common name, maybe it's scientific name, at least family it belongs to, other random facts about it, and if you can eat it or not

When I was a kid, I couldn't draw well at all. I had a very immature pencil grip and poor coloring skills, then one day when I was 10, I picked up a pencil, a ruler and a piece of A4 paper and drew rows and rows of houses in oblique projection! My Mum couldn't understand how I managed to do that and neither did I!