Eidetic/ photgraphic memory

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I am a visual thinker. My youngest daughter calls me a 'walking encyclopedia". I absorb information and am intensely curious about a wide range of subjects.

I too can remember the garphic image of something I studied, and find the sentece or part, I want to "read aloud". I hear myself recite as I remember contents, - and when I explain something and is asked to explain the same a month or two later, I hear exactly the same coming out of my mouth in exactly the same tone and rythm, accompanied with the exact same muscular behavior as last time.

My mum says I spit information back at her. My memory is good, but it depends what I want to be about.

My parents sometimes curse my memory because when I was 10 I was able to memorize the password they put for Dish-on-Demand and used that to unlock porno movies from the Spice and Playboy Channels.

I have a couple of skills that I always called "Autistic", long before I ever realised I have AS.

Firstly, my memory is not permanently photographic, but for the purposes that are actually useful, it is perfect. I could sit down for weeks learning lectures and textbooks and then in an exam literally open the page in my brain and find the information. I have to consciously take things in, though, I can't just memorise something flashing through my vision. In English exams I could keep dozens of quotes in my head and use them easily. Most of what I studied was science but I could do this in any topic.

I also have the ability to quote people verbatim; if I am actually listening to them, I can say back (or write down) at least 60 seconds of speech. It's not great, because you can point out their errors and they don't like that. I can keep things in memory all day without trying.

I'm also capable of memorising huge amounts of music which many other performers struggle with.

The other "Autistic" skill is to do with maths. I did quantum mechanics and astrophysics at university and I could calculate essentially anything in my head - it could be exceptionally complex, containing all kinds of numbers, cube roots, weird scientific constants etc… but I could usually get the answer by just looking at it, sort of relaxing my thoughts, and it would appear in 2-5 seconds. Handy at times. I could also do tan cos and sin in my head, plus all the square and cube roots and exponential functions and logarithms.

I can memorise phone numbers instantly, calculate the grocery total and the change faster than the cashier, and tell people what day of the week a certain date is.

All this stuff is to do with patterns I suppose.

I can do basic math in my head and certain parts of geometry in my head with no problem, despite not having taken a geometry class since high school.