Super Recognition

I just finished watching 60 Minutes from last night.  I had it recorded.  I wanted to watch it because of the story on Elon Musk and SpaceX.  I finished watching the entire episode because the thing about people who have face blindness was pretty interesting.  Of course they also brought up a few people with super recognition.  They provided the test in the video above. 

Sometimes I hate watching 60 Minutes, when they do these things on super memory I always end up discovering just how much more freaky my brain really is.  I took the test and passed it, twice I got it before the girl in the video.  I did miss a couple because I didn't know what the person looked like to begin with.  I guess I wasn't surprised, quite often when watching TV I will pick someone obscure out of a show and connect them with something I saw them in before...sometimes years and years before.   I can do the same thing with people on the street.

I don't know why my brain is different than most people's.  I find that sometimes these things make others so uncomfortable.  Especially when you can recognize their face or voice, or can relate a conversation nearly verbatim that you had as much as years before hand.  People think you're a little too interested in them when in fact you're not.  Plus people constantly accuse me of always having to be right or being a know it all.  I can't help it, it's just the way my brain works.  My long term memory retention is horrifying.   I do have days when my short term memory is terrible though.  Go figure.  There are certain gaps however, an occasional little thing that I cannot retain no matter what.  I have to ask R every single time what my cell phone number is and I have asked my Mother about 50 times what my Grandmother passed away from.  I finally had to write those down.  And yet the unimportant minutiae I can remember is ridiculous.

I don't know if the brain has a capacity limit, but sometimes I worry that I will hit it.  I suppose that's an odd thing to worry about it...but if you were me you might worry over it too.  You simply cannot fathom all the useless things floating around up there.

A while back a friend of mine was concerned about her grandson who has started displaying a high genius level IQ.  She asked me why it is that the more intelligent a person is, the less social skills they have.  I explained that because the smarter you are the closer you are to being autistic.  She asked me how I managed to be so open and friendly.  I explained to her that it's a daily struggle for me, and I have had to work at it so hard.  I could easily become a hermit and just be lost in my own thoughts.  In fact I can turn that corner and hyper focus so hard on something that a friend once urged me to get tested for OCD.  I did get tested, and it came back negative.  The fact remains that I can focus on something hard enough to make myself physically sick in the form of a brutal migraine and/or a stomach ache.  I can be so consumed with something that I forget to eat and sleep.  I have to eventually mentally slap myself out of it, if R doesn't come to my rescue.

So when you judge me sometimes for my posts when I sound pretentious or pompous, try to remember that I am this way...and I would give anything in the world to just be like everyone else.  When I get upset and start sobbing like an idiot over being different, R always assures me it's a gift, but I can assure you that it doesn't feel like one so much of the time.   I never mean to sound that way.  I simply don't know the parameters of anyone else's knowledge or memory base, and I tend to assume that you know or remember what I know or remember.  I have embraced my surface eccentricities over the years, but embracing the fact that my cerebral function is different than most people on the planet is something I haven't been able to master yet.

An Experiment In Worry ~ No One Is Keeping Score

Before I launch into my topic at hand, I want to tell you that Dralion was AMAZING!   If you get the opportunity to go see it, by all means do so.  Having the front row seats were so great.  You could see every detail of the costumes, the makeup...so wonderful.  So much inspiration.  I also got "petted" by one of the clowns.  It was funny and he was adorable.

Ok so on to the topic at hand...yesterday I decided to conduct a little Facebook experiment.  I made the following post:

"I am conducting a little experiment. So if you read this post, would you please hit the like button. I am going to do another post later and I am asking that you don't hit the like button on that one. I will explain after the fact what I was doing. Thanks!"

22 people hit the like button.  Considering I posted that at about 5:30 AM MST, I found that to be an impressive number.

About 6-7 hours later I posted the picture shown above without any explanation.  18 people hit the like button on that post.  A good number  of the people who hit the like button on the second post were the same ones who read the first post and hit the like button.  Now please understand I was in no way trying to embarrass anyone.  Had it been me, I probably would have done the same thing.  I was just curious to see how long people would retain what they read.

So why was I doing that?  Many of my posts are based on conversations I witness or participate in with other artists.  So this post is based on something some artists were discussing and worrying over.

I read a quote long ago that said 90% of all the things people worry about never come true.  I believe that to be fairly accurate.  All too often we worry over little things needlessly.  One of the main things I see artists worrying about are the things they say or that are said about them online.  There is a concern that it will be misconstrued or misinterpreted, and that people will remember what was said forever!  That somehow it will effect our business or how others view us.

I want you to think about the last few things you read and the pics you saw on Facebook, Twitter or a Blog?  Do you remember what they were?  I have an exceptional memory and I don't remember most of them.  I don't even remember everything I posted.  It's not that people are not interested in what we have to say, or in us.  It's just that people read it and then think about picking their kids up from school or what to make for dinner...they have their own lives that take precedent above what we are doing all the time.  That's the way it should be. While people do like our work and are curious about us sometimes, we don't have the kind of influence we may like to think we do.  That's a good thing!  I certainly don't think I am that big of an influence on anyone's life.  Too much pressure!  *grins*

When we post something, and then circumstances change...as they do once in a while in everyone's lives and we have to contradict what we had previously said, no one is keeping score unless we do it every single time, which most of us don't.

When we make some sort of faux pas, people usually look past it to see who we are as a whole, especially if they have been friends or loyal followers.  They may even think ill of us for a moment or two, but most of them are not keeping score.  Nor do they hold grudges forever when they realize that we are not inherently bad people.

When someone else posts something less than favorable about us, whether they name us by name or not...it can seem devastating at the time.  It seems as if everyone saw and they are judging us whether we did what we were accused of or not.  But the truth is, only a small handful of people ever see anything that is posted online.  They remember it about as long as they do reading something less than favorable about a movie star in a tabloid in the grocery store check out line.  No one is keeping score.  If they are, they may not want to throw stones at glass houses because we all do these things at some point.

We are human beings...we are flawed and fallible.  We will make mistakes, we will be sorry for them, we will try to learn from them, we will be forgiven by the people who like us and our work.  We will be talked about at times, like it or not.  It will not ruin our businesses, it will not ruin our reputations if we are good, honest, hard working people most of the time.

No one is going to think less of us for not being perfect or selling every single thing we make within five minutes of posting it.  Business doesn't always work that way.  It doesn't mean our work is bad, it just means that the right person for that bear hasn't found it yet.

So the next time this happens to you, and you are worrying or losing sleep over it...please don't.  Just be your sweet, lovable self and move on, let it go.  I promise you...hardly anyone saw it, and if they did...no one is keeping score!

Hugs, K. <3

Memory

The other day I was talking to my Mother and I told her about something I remembered from when I was a kid.  She was really surprised I could remember it.  I told her not only do I remember it, but I remember what the chair looked like, what I was wearing, what the temperature was, and exactly how I felt at the time.

A couple weeks ago I was telling another bear artist about the first time we met.  He didn't remember it, but I told him a few details.  What I didn't tell him was that I remembered a whole lot more details than just what I told him.  And...that I remember every detail of every time I have ever seen him, and nearly everyone else I have ever met.  I did however give a disclaimer that I am not a stalker. *giggles*  I actually have to do that a lot.

Last night it finally rained.  We have had a drought, and I was thrilled we had a storm.  When I went to bed I was thinking about the first time my Mother pointed out lightning.  I didn't know what lightning was though and I confused it for something on the landscape that I had never seen before.  I was very, very young.  I remember we were walking and she wanted to hurry.  I remember exactly where we were and what it looked like, what we wearing and where we had come from.

I even remember the day I began to be able to remember.  I was roughly 2 1/2 years old, I was in my Grandma's kitchen.  I asked for a green sucker.  I can tell you what the linoleum looked like.  I remember the room layout, the furniture, the colors of the braided chair pads, what I was wearing, what she was wearing and that she was drying dishes.  She sat the dish towel down, which was red and white striped cotton, and reached on top of the fridge to get a sucker out of a can.  We were out of green, and I ended up with an orange one.  Everything before that moment is a bit fuzzy, although every once in a while something will seep through with a little more clarity.

I don't know if you watched 60 Minutes last night, but apparently it was a repeat.  It was the first time I had seen it however, and I have to say I was rather excited about it.  They did a piece on "Superior Autobiographical Memory."  Now I don't have that, but I am close. 

I can't remember numbers very well.  That goes back to something that happened in 2nd grade with a dreadful teacher I had named Mrs. Jones.  I remember the entire day leading up to it, and after...but I cannot remember what happened exactly.  I think I have blocked it out.  I know it had something to do with numbers and I know I was crying hysterically.  But that's it.  I do however remember her making me miss lunch every day to re-write my homework because my hand writing was so bad.  I always wondered why she did that, because it was never any better the second time I wrote it.  I also remember riding home on the bus every afternoon just starving for having missed lunch.  She always took my lunch away and never gave it back.  Of course now she wouldn't be able to get away with that, but in the 60's teachers could do more to their students in the name of higher learning.

As a result, I can't recall dates since they are numbers.  But my memory is horrifyingly good.  Another interesting thing in last night's episode was when they were showing Marilu Henner's closet.  While I don't have a closet like hers, mine is colorized and has been since I was 22.  All of my shoes are in labeled boxes and grouped together by style, and also colorized.  The rest of my house isn't nearly as nicely organized, but I can tell you where nearly every single thing I own is.  Believe me, what with 30 years of bear supplies piled on top of the rest of the stuff I have accumulated...that's saying quite a lot.  I also tend to be a bit of a germaphobe like the guy sitting in the group to the bottom left.  The other thing I have in common with them is that my temporal lobe is larger than normal.  I remember a doctor mentioning that during a CAT scan.

The thing I took away from the show was that all of a sudden, I didn't feel quite like such a freak.  People who know me well are always astounded by my memory retention, and sometimes doubt that it's really as good as I say it is.  But it is that good, and I have come to realize that having a memory like mine is rare, in fact I have never met anyone else with the memory retention I have.  Like the people on the show, I have to agree that it can be a blessing and a curse.  I usually tell people that it's sporadic eidetic memory, but that's not quite accurate because it's more than sporadic.  I seem to have something that falls in between several categories.  Being different can make you feel very alone sometimes.  It's nice to know I am not alone.