I can fall asleep, near instantly, at will.
I call it my time machine function.
I envy you so much. Yours is an actual superpower. My ability is the opposite, I can wake up from an alarm no matter the circumstance, slept only 3 hours while completely drunk? Still wake up instantly and start doing things, I’ve never missed an alarm in my life.
I can also fall asleep very easily, but I cannot just get up to save my life. I envy that ability.
We need to learn the fusion dance, we would be unstoppable! (To be clear, I can wake up and be ‘functional’ whenever, doesnt mean I get good rest nor wake up happy)
You an I… We are either going to form an unstoppable super team or… You ate going to end up as my nemesis.
You sleep a lot and I do everything? Doesnt sound very nice to me, tho in FF14 there is a quest chain where one guys is always awake and his ‘wife’ sleeps for him because of a magical item.
I can sleep at will and wake up at will. Like I am traveling early so I have to wake at 4:30am no problem!
I have a blurry photographic memory.
What I mean is that I can remember where/what an item looks like but can’t read it. This was especially lame and stressful in nursing school because during a test I could recall exactly where in the textbook or PowerPoint slide the answer was, but couldn’t “read” it from said memory. Stuff like “it was in the yellow shaded an the lower inner quarter of the page, second and third billet points” or “halfway down the page, highlighted in pink, and next to it was a graphic of the Krebs cycle” Not as helpful as you might think.
You have to wear glasses, obviously.
Same. Also, I can see things from when I was an infant up until now. All of my past memories are like normal childhood memories, there is no cut off before 2 or whatever everyone else has. It’s not every single memory, but the ones that stick out in your mind like every other memory from your past.
I have a watered down version of this, but I’m a lawyer so it’s very very valuable. If I get a question I might not know the answer to, if I’ve read it somewhere I usually know roughly where to go back to get it. And since lawyers mostly look things up instead of trying to memorize everything, a powerful “indexing” memory is valuable in the profession. At least in my practice.
Fuck, I knew I chose wrong.
Same! The good news is that in real life there is an abundance of reference materials, but little time to parse them. So this skill is MUCH more useful. I have legit had coworkers tell me that my ability to quickly navigate long complex documents to find the one paragraph that applies to our situation is a superpower.
I can smell fear. I always thought that was normal, because it’s used idiomatically, but the first time I said something in a group of people, they looked at me like an alien. When someone’s anxious, their sweat smells more metallic to me, like amphetamine/coke sweat (which makes sense).
My boyfriend can smell when someone drank alcohol hours (or even days!) later. He seems to smell it in a person’s sweat, so we suspect he senses some kind of metabolite.
As to me? In-person I seem to emit a comforting, trustworthy aura. Children and stray animals approach me like they just know that I’m a safe space for them. As a result, I’ve acquired quite a list of no-kill shelters in my phone. I also ended up working in children’s therapy.
Adults who share my wavelength can also recognize it in me, and I can recognize it in them - we’re drawn to each other in the same “inherently trustworthy” way. I suspect it’s an aspect of neuro-divergence.
I’m similar. Ever since I was a kid, my mom would notice that “babies love me.” They really do. If there’s a baby nearby, it’ll probably love me and I’ll probably be making faces at it, etc. I think it’s partially the beard, but it was true pre-beard, too.
I can count almost perfect seconds. Most people think they can count seconds until they try to prove it.
Like, give me a stopwatch. I can count seconds to within an average of .05 of a second.
I can do this consistently over a long period of time, i gave up counting when i tested it.
It’s because i used to have 3 clocks in my living room, and they all used to tick at different times. I guess from when the battery was connected and it would create all these different rhythms.
After many years of hearing these rhythms and noticing the different rhythms that would be made as we changed the batteries over time, i ended up being able to tap the rhythm out on a table/in my head etc and now its just ingrained into my head.
taTA ta… taTA ta… taTA ta…
Absolutely useless.
It’s because i used to have 3 clocks in my living room, and they all used to tick at different times. I guess from when the battery was connected and it would create all these different rhythms.
Even one clock ticking in a room is enough to drive me mad. I’m not sure if having three would be better or worse. Adding some rhythm to it might help actually.
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I’ve spent too much time staring at the clock, full of anxiety, watching seconds pass. I’ve internalized the rhythm, just like with a song.
It’s a cool trick, sometimes. People get a kick out of me calling out the microwave timer from across the room.
I have a similar good sense of timing, but not to that precision, based upon a childhood experience with shower length.
My parents were frustrated with how long I would shower, so I brought an egg timer in to help myself keep track of time. Over a year or two of this habit I developed a very good sense of timing in 5-10 minute intervals.
My resting heart rate is very close to 60bpm, so I can use that as a reasonable timer to “wait ten seconds.” If I’m up and moving around or even playing an intense video game it’s no go but I can do it sometimes.
My super power? Invisible to government bureaucracy. Every time I fill out my absentee voter reg, I get a response back telling me I forgot to fill out my birthday. On my last one, I took photos of the filled out form. I’ve never been assigned jury duty. When I go to the BMV it takes hours because they forget to put my number in the ticket system. (This has happened at multiple BMVs, across multiple states) and it’s not like I’m being an asshole or anything, I just get my number and wait patiently for my name to come up on the board, and after seeing the entire room cycle out once or twice I check in with the staff and they’re like “weird, your number isn’t in the system” despite me holding the paperwork/ticket with my call number on it.
My wife is a super taster/smeller. Like to an extreme level. She can’t eat bell peppers because they are too spicy. ( They do produce capsaicin, but so little that they are a scoville rating of 0), she can tell if I steal a sip of her drink, because she can taste the difference on her straw/cup. When we make pasta or mashed potatoes, she knows if I put a little sprinkle of salt in the water (were talking a pinch of salt for maybe 6-7 cups of water), and she can smell that much salt before she even tastes the food. When I eat out for lunch at work, she can not only tell me where I went to eat, but she call tell me what I ordered and if I made any alterations to the order. And no, she doesn’t just know what I like to order, I try new stuff for my lunch all the time. The craziest one was when we had a staff lunch, and she was like “Jimmy johns, roast beef, with mustard and hot peppers mix” and I was like “WTF” and she said “that’s what you said for lunch, please change your clothes and take a shower”. Here’s the rub… That was my first time trying JJs roast beef.
Maybe I’m just a filthy stinky person and don’t know it.
The craziest one was when we had a staff lunch, and she was like “Jimmy johns, roast beef, with mustard and hot peppers mix”
Next time she does that, say “joke’s on you, I actually just went down on the neighbor lady” and see how she reacts.
Maybe you’re just a really messy eater, and she doesn’t have the heart to tell you? Does her prediction change when you tied a napkin around your neck before eating?
I’m exercising my 5th amendment right.
I have abnormally good colour vision.
I have no idea what to do with this.
Found out when studying photography. We did some colour tests that get gradually harder. You are supposed to fail at some point. I kept on passing all of them. My “regular” vision is just normal though.
Are you a tetrachromat?
I had no idea what that was before reading your comment.
I have now taken a few online tests that indicates I might be. BUT I did it with just regular screens. My phone and computer screens are not professional so I can’t guarantee any accuracy. I might try to find a professional test later.
Thanks for telling me about this! :)
I can smell reposts and pictures I have already seen a mile away.
I’m a stair master. I sprint them 3-4-5 at a time, smooth and quiet as a ninja. Up or down, doesn’t matter
I used to wonder why adults didn’t run up the stairs. I figured adults must just be no fun and didn’t want to look silly running upstairs.
So all throughout my childhood, teens, 20s, and 30s I would usually run up my stairs because it just felt natural. Then not too far into my 40s, my knee was just like “nope”.
Now I have to walk upstairs, which is lame as hell.
No way man, I’m gonna keep on rocking forever!
Forever!
Forever
Forever…Exactly! And in this case, “what’s it” is having knees that don’t hurt.
shush you, time for your medicine!
(I’m approaching my 40s, so you got me worried haha)
It was 42 for me specifically. Good luck!
I can’t stay angry; I have multi-sensory aphantaisa, this comes with not being able to re-experience emotions.
I remember that something made me angry, but I can’t relive the emotion. It lets me dispassionately examine the past to see what made me angry and thus work through the trigger and try to reduce it in the future.
There is the downside to this, it is on all emotion, so I also can’t re-experience happy emotions either.
Is there some sort of cooldown where you can experience the emotion again after a certain amount of time?
If I’m understanding umit correctly, it’s more like they only experience the emotions of a situation in that situation and memories lack that cognitive association with those emotions.
That is a great way of framing it.
It isn’t like that.
e.g. So a situation I get angry / sad about happens. Unless it keeps up the feelings wane over the next few minutes, thinking about the triggering events does not bring back the emotions…if I want to stay angry, I have to really work at it too keep the emotion going, it is never “worth” the effort.
If one thing makes me angry, and I haven’t had a few minutes to let the emotion fade, and something else tips me off then the anger builds at the new thing and fades for the old thing; it just happens faster.
In saying that, I really don’t get angry all that often; as I have worked through most of the things that set me off. Except bullying, that still fucks me off to no end.
Ah, I see, it’s attached to that specific memory. That makes sense!
I think I may have the opposite, at least some times. If I think about it too much I’ll feel the emotion way to strongly which is a problem itself.
I imagine that would be really annoying, like how do you process unhelpful emotions; if when you think about them they start back up?
As in, when you are remembering/reimagining an experience that you’ve had?
I can repressurize my ears without yawning, just by flexing a muscle. Even less useful, I can focus my eyes to different distances without using the finger trick, which comes in handy never.
Is it the same muscle as when you do the rumbly ear thing?
I thought everyone could do this. That’s a super power?!
Not everyone!
Check out the Function->Voluntary Control section here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor_tympani_muscle
I tried to find stats on what proportion of people could do it, with claims of “a small number” through to “over half the population”.
This study says 55% in the general population. It’s also interesting as it’s exploring the ability to use this voluntary rumble as a control method for assistive technology.
you can easily view parallel or cross view images
Actually no, those have never worked for me, idk why
Tensor tympani is the muscle
It’d probably come in handy if you started sports shooting. I do Olympic-style air pistol shooting, and part of what I’m currently training on is focusing my eye on the forward sight, not the target.
Brother 😎
I have extremely sensitive hearing. I can tell when there’s an animal scarer nearby.
This brings me to Microsoft Teams. You might have seen people mention that their dogs know when someone joins the call before they do. That’s because they introduced “ultrasonic howling” to detect if they’re in the same room as you, and mutes their mic.
It hurts like fucking hell with headphones on.
Never heard of ultrasonic howling, but what a cool idea - stop that feedback in its tracks! Bummer that it bothers your hearing.
Animal scarers make me feel like someone shot me in the head.
I’m partially deaf but I can hear those really high whines anyway. I can pretty much only hear high notes.
I can’t imagine how infuriating that must be. How do you live with it?
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I have hyperthymia. It’s a constant state of mild mania and when I get flare ups of it it’s like I’m on speed
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Excellent colour vision, forget what it’s called but I have being a girl to thank for this one!
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I have hyperphantasia too, and didn’t realize this until someone posted a diagram on here. When I imagine an apple in my head, it looks the same as me seeing it in real life. I never knew this wasn’t normal until pretty recently!
Diagram on that last one? the apple not appearing like it does in real life sounds weird to me.
Anything less than a 1 makes me raise eyebrows, but the fact some people see just an outline or even nothing still blows my mind
I can see it but it’s kind of blurry.
Definetaly a 1 here, I knew some people were a 5 but I always assumed that 1 is the norm.
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It’s more like a blurry flash to me
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I can ‘flex’ my Eustachian tubes and ‘open them’ at will, e.g. equalising pressure when ears need ‘popping’ on planes. I’m sure it isn’t that uncommon but no one ever knows what I mean when I say it.
This is called the tensor timpani and I just learned from my hypermobilty support group that it’s super common in people with hypermobilty disorders generally to be able to move them. Look up Beighton scale and give yourself a quick check.
Finding out I was hypermobile lead to me discovering my ADHD wasn’t inattention, but highly variable blood pressure and a wonky vagal nerve condition. Changed my meds, changed my life.
…aaaannnndddd I’ve just stumbled into a rabbit hole that’s going to eat up half my day.
Oh wow thanks so much, I will have a look at that. I am awaiting ADHD assessment so this could be an interesting twist!!!
I only recently discovered that not everyone can do this. I was telling my teenager to “just pop your ears” when she was swimming under water and neither her nor her mom had any idea what I was talking about.
Ever scuba dive? Most masks you see have a rubber nose piece that lets the diver squeeze their nose shut so they can blow and equalize pressure.
No i haven’t, but I’m hopefully going to try next month. I’ll try to remember to experiment with this then.
To wander further off topic.
imho Belize is the best place for a scuba vacation. I went last year. Former British colony where everyone speaks English and you can spend American dollars easily. It sits next to the second biggest coral system on Earth so you have abundant wildlife.
Enjoy.
So that’s what that was called.
I’ve got that. Very useful for looking unaffected by pressure changes, which is to say, not that useful.
People dont get what you mean with “popping your ears”? How can an adult never experience that?
Most people do it by swallowing? So I guess they shrug it off that I do it slightly differently.
Yeah but I feel like most adults would have had pressure sensitive ears at some point in the life (like from a cold or something), forcing them to learn about popping ears, even if the only way of doing it they know is swallowing.
Like, when you pinch your nose and blow?
Yeah, but when i do it, it sounds like rushing blood in my ears. Found it is something everyone does but it’s not voluntary like when you yawn.
I can do it on demand.
I can do that too!
I could hunt down old tube tvs from a block away just by the electricity sound of the crt tubes when they where on.
Same, being able to hear when electronics are on is very useful when you work with computers.
