I don't want to scare you but I used to have an eidetic memory for music and books as a child. I could listen to a song once and replay it from memory. I had to read longer books twice to memorize everything but but once it was there, it was there forever.
I don't know when I lost this ability. It was a gradual process but by the time I was 12, it was pretty much gone. It's worth noting that I quit music around 8 because the pressure was just too much. If I had kept up with it, I might have retained my memory a little bit better.
DD had
incredible memory when she was tiny. REALLY amazing stuff.
She has lost most of it now at 13, and recalls very few things from before she was three. A few, but they don't have the sharp clarity of detail that they did when she was four and five.
She also seemed to have an AUDITORY and temporal version of it-- it wasn't for print text, ever. She has a very strong spatial memory, and so do I-- we don't remember text, we recall WHERE something is. Sometimes that is sufficient to recall headings or clear enough that I can "zoom" to see what I want to recall. But often not, too.
It's pretty much savant level, in my case. ANYWHERE that I've been, I can find again. I recently found a little restaurant in the Latin Quarter (tucked into an alley) that I'd been to once the week before (led by a school tour guide through the streets for about a mile), and managed to find it using landmarking and just... well, okay, this sounds silly, but a sort of internal compass. My DH no longer doubts my ability to act as navigator. I can
almost do this from maps.
I also always know what time it is. This was a fun parlor trick for my friends in middle and high school-- to cover my eyes and ask me what time it was. I was
always right-- usually within a minute or two.
But I do not have a good auditory memory, and my DH does. That's where DD gets that one from.
ETA: I'm convinced that most people have one or more savant-type skills/abilities. I'm a human homing pigeon and I have this... thing.... for color. Like perfect pitch, but visual. That one is TRULY eidectic. Not useful, but interesting. I can match paint colors from memory. Even years later. LOL.
DD just reads at superhuman speed and reads people-- she's like an empath. I think that's her savant thing.
