Questions: #15

If you're not familiar with this series of posts, and you want to catch up, the introduction is here.

Question #15: What’s something you know you do differently than most people?

I know that I think differently than many, if not most, people.  I think about things using a combination of visual words and pictures.  Sure, it's language, but what I think is really different is that I don't think the words; I see them.  When I write this blog, or a memo for work, or an email, I draft it with visual words in my head before the words appear on the page.  When I quote lyrics or poetry, it's not that I memorized the verbal words, but I have memorized the way the words are spelled and the order they appear in the sentence.  I feel extreme emotion when I commit those written words to memory, almost as if I wrote them myself first.  And when I read books or magazines, the words rewrite in my head so that it seems more like I'm reading what's in my mind than what's on the page.  If you've ever watched Harry Potter, and you know the scene where Harry writes "I must not tell lies" on his parchment, but it appears on his hand instead then you'll begin to understand what I mean.  It works just like that, except instead of blood and parchment, it's ink and virtual words that only I can see.

When I remember memories from childhood or even yesterday, I remember them in photographs instead of a movie.  Everything is stationary for a while. For example, I know that I don't really remember anything when my grandfather died.  I don't remember who told me he had died, and I don't remember the funeral service.  I suppose we went to a viewing, but I couldn't tell you anything about it.  And I'd imagine my family had some sort of luncheon or something of the sort after it was over, but I'll be damned if I know what it was.  There is only one thing I remember only about that entire experience, and it was very late at night.  I'm not sure what night it even was, but  I was in the car and we stopped at a convenience store. I got out of the car and stood there sobbing, completely motionless except for tears streaming down my face.  I remembering thinking "this is the first time I have cried."  I don't remember what happened next.  I don't remember who I was with, although I presume it was my mother and father.  I don't know if they spoke to me, or when I decided to get in the car.  I'm not sure if I got a drink or went to the bathroom or did anything else you usually do at a convenience store.  That's all I think about when I think about his death.  And that is the case with almost any memory I have.  Big memories.  Small memories.  They are captured in tiny snapshots frozen in time.

I guess I don't know how other people think, but I'm pretty sure it's not the way I just described it.  I've heard people say they think in pictures, but they describe what is in their mind as a continuous screenplay.  I've heard people say are visual thinkers or learners, but they describe a very concrete process of writing on paper, not in their minds.  And I've heard people say they think in words, but I'd be surprised to find out that they the words write themselves on the inside of their skull at the same time they are constructing the thought.

It's my opinion that I do a number of other things that are different from other people, but I find myself believing that much of what I do differently stems from a brain that processes memories and learns new things in the ways I just described.

How are you different?  In what ways do you do things that other people don't or won't?  Are you proud of that?  Do you wish you could change it?