Memory.

Something in my head has clicked.

This. Is. Me.

And that makes me feel more 'normal' than I've felt for a long time.  For those of you who can't see the programme - or those of you who have better things to do in your lives than sit around watching Channel 4 documentaries - it's about people who claim to have a Complete Autobiographical Memory, ie. they don't forget things.  Or rather, they do forget things, they just remember a heck of a lot of stuff as well.

I don't have a complete autobiographical memory, but I do have a good memory.  I can often tell people where I was on a certain day or what happened in a certain month in a certain year, or where I was when important world events happened.

For example, during the programme, the interviewer asked Aurelien, The Boy Who Can't Forget, where he was on the 7th July, 2008.  As quickly as he can recall the events which happened to him on that day, I can tell you that it was a Monday: I went swimming and then went into my school to give a birthday card to a girl in my form.  I saw my form teacher and she told me that it was nice to see me, and that she thought it was lovely that I'd remembered the girl's birthday, and then I had lots of worried phonecalls from my Dad, who'd heard me talking about going swimming but hadn't actually thought I'd 'go through with it'.

And, just like all the subjects of the film, I don't know how I do it: it's just there.  

I've always scored sort of averagely on memory tests - my memory of the order of a pack of cards, for example, isn't any better than anyone else's and, although I'm good at remembering phone numbers, I can't remember a series of digits of particularly impressive length, either.  

This hasn't particularly to do with OCD, I don't think, although there is a theory that having an extraordinary Autobiographical Memory is simply an 'OCD-type' obsession with your own life, but I guess it comes under the heading of 'Kate's Mental Health', and I wanted to write something about it, because watching the programme made something suddenly click, and I think I've learnt something about myself tonight.

I've had a quick scout around the internet for online tests, and I wish there was some way of meeting people who had this ability, or finding out whether there is any sort of testing I could undergo, just because it's something I'm really interested in, and it's difficult to test yourself (when trying to conjure up random dates, I simply think of ones which I associate events with...).

Have any of my readers with OCD (or without OCD!) got advanced Autobiographical (or any other sort of- ) Memories?